Why Penguins?
I have always loved penguins, but it wasn’t till I reflected on why that I came to realise it was tied to how I grew up. I’m an immigrant to the United States, yet despite coming from the United Kingdom, I still grew up feeling like the “other".
I once was asked in an interview, “if I could be any animal, what animal would I be?” Then without leaving space even for an ounce of contemplation and much to the surprise of who would be my future team lead, I blurted out, “Penguins!” I didn’t have any deep reasoning for my declaration; I still don’t. I have always just loved penguins — followed by Puffins with a striking orange beak and then the “BAMF” bird of prey, the peregrine falcon.
Since that day, however, I have often wondered what a penguin actually says about me. After all, they are universally lovable and endearing flightless birds. While other flightless avians became adept at running, developing an imposing stature with talons that could maim or kill, these wingnuts called penguins became superb swimmers, often inhabiting the sub-arctic and arctic. So was it this unique adaptation I admired? Did I think of myself as unique among the plumage of the other birds? A reasonable leap, but reflecting on the thought, aren’t we all unique? We are all so commonly unique that the quality should probably make us more humble rather than boastful, but I digress. Perhaps, I felt an attachment to this bird, thanks to the British-Swiss children’s program “Pingu” I watched when I was younger? The first series premiered in 1990, the year I was born, and would seem like a strong origin for my unexplained fondness for this aquatic bird species. However, the nostalgic memory the show provokes feels too neat and tidy, with the polished veneer of an uncomplicated beginning.
Unravelling the origin of the — what I’m sure is to be expected — complicated and nuanced reasoning behind my quick response involving a claymation penguin known for yelling “NOOT NOOT” is in dire need of some backstory. It’s a long way around, but abstraction will end up being an intellectual traffic jam that no one needs. So, first things, first, in the beginning, there was a void of darkness, and the Lord said, “let there be Ryan,” and there was Ryan.
I was born in the same hospital my mum was born in, 24 years earlier, at four in the morning near the end of May, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, otherwise called the Midlands. My mum’s family were Scottish and came from Glasgow. My Nan was native to Scotland, while my granddad was the son of Lithuanian immigrants. The latter had fled their homeland, fearing the Soviet Red Army that invaded and occupied the small Baltic country. (Fun Fact: Lithuania is one of the only countries with a right to return clause to any descendant of a Lithuanian citizen who fled the country during this time and through to the 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meaning that myself, my mum, aunt, and cousins can all apply for citizenship, despite being displaced almost a century ago.)
On my dad’s side, the family is English sort of. My grandfather was born in Hull, Yorkshire, but with a surname that says Irish, my Nana is perhaps the only true Englishman, hailing from Manchester with the very English maiden name of Cooksman. They are both equally hardworking and working-class but managed to defy the odds of the class system they were born into, not only breaking through to the middle class but also finding themselves rising far above it. Each one of my grandparents begins their life story, whether they mean to or not, with the timbre and characteristic of their accent. Because in the United Kingdom with a humble “Hello”, you learn where someone comes from and the family into which they were born.
Pay attention when I speak, and you will hear a contraction like “y’all” embedded alongside words that are uncharacteristic for Americans to use, such as “bin”, “toilet”, and “fancy dress” in place of “trash can”, “bathroom”, and “costume”.
My accent does very much the same, but with its odd inflexions, sometimes strange drawls, and dialectical blending, it showcases a far more complicated story of identity than the steadfast and colourful Glaswegian accent my Nan has. Pay attention when I speak, and you will hear a contraction like “y’all” embedded alongside words that are uncharacteristic for Americans to use, such as “bin”, “toilet”, and “fancy dress” in place of “trash can”, “bathroom”, and “costume”. I have this strange mix of vocabulary because, at a young age, I started spending my life sometimes in the United States and other times in the United Kingdom, in what felt like the flickering of a bad electrical wire intermittently turning on a light bulb before finally holding steady. At around the time I was the age of ten, my mum and I had become legal permanent residents of the United States — embarrassingly — living in the state of Florida.
I could never say I had a terrible, let alone a lousy childhood and have not had an unhappy life. The fact I was afforded the ability to immigrate as I did should indicate to any passive observer I was privileged more than most. Still, immigrating and growing up in the United States didn’t come without its share of bad memories and experiences that have left a bitter taste in my mouth. When I look back on my life with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear to see that both the good and the bad have a common through line permeating everything. I spoke funny, I was foreign, I was different, I was British, and I was bullied, then lionised for that difference.
The historic slang insults I was often called by, such as limey, redcoat, and lobsterback, often led me to wonder if I should be more insulted by their brazen use.
It goes without saying that as a kid, the last thing you ever want to be is different; kids can be ruinous monsters to each other. Sometimes I was a curiosity to other children, and then in others, I would be asked to say the words like “free” and “three” repeatedly, with each utterance receiving bouts of laughter. When we’d learn about US History, which is filled with myth and propaganda, my country was often the great villain of American freedom, who America had to save from the Nazis. One former teacher even led me to believe that freedom was an exclusively American right that no other country possessed and that my country was not free.
My American classmates had plenty of cannon fodder to hurl my direction from those false portrayals, often unchallenged because I didn’t learn about my country’s achievements till I was in my twenties. The historic slang insults I was often called by, such as limey, redcoat, and lobsterback, often led me to wonder if I should be more insulted by their brazen use. Insults like “loser” — you know, because of the revolution — and British bastard were far easier to parse when it came to knowing what my reaction should be. After all these years, and the countless number of times I have been told to “go back to the shitty island I came from”, I came to realise one clear truth between the vague banality and malice of these words: I would never be American.
The idea that I could or would ever want to be American now is laughable. My identity of English or British was how I was identified, both positively and negatively. One friend’s mum made sure to have butter specifically for me when she made us sandwiches because we didn’t use mayonnaise and hated the taste for years. By the time I was a teenager, my slowly fading accent had become “sexy”, and I was often asked to say phrases like “I love you” or words such as “peanut butter” or “water” by the girls in my classes. I was British Ryan.
I was not American. I was not allowed to be American, so I never truly felt like I was ever home.
The positive shift in my nationality was a welcome improvement, but it still had the same underlying message as all the negative attention, I was not American. I was not allowed to be American, so I never truly felt like I was ever home. When I would return to England for a visit, it always felt like the comforting embrace of sleeping in your own bed, under your duvet, and resting on your pillow. For me, living in the US has felt a lot more like sleeping in a nice hotel room. The bed is soft, the fabric feels nice, but it will never feel like your bed, and you will never sleep as soundly as you do at home.
As I grew older, my accent began to fade, while to any sharp listener, they would find my accent strange and hard to place. I was left with my odd vocabulary, weird effects of my interactions, spellings, and grammar. I began to notice that without the apparent accent, I struck people as strange; the way I spoke went a long way in explaining odd quirks I had. I knew this because whenever I revealed I wasn’t American, I’d have a response like “Oh! That makes so much sense!” or “That answers a lot!”
With the loss of my accent, a new phrase started following me around, “Well, you’re not really British, you’re basically American now.” After years of not being allowed to forget my nationality, this felt like a slap in the face. It became even more insulting when someone in my own family decided to tell me something similar. While there is an argument to be made for this thought, I spent most of my life being identified and ridiculed for being English. As such, to be called American felt like I was robbed of my identity. I didn’t feel American, I was never thought of as American, and now I wasn’t supposed to be English. What am I, Canadian? Is that how they are forged?
Many people assume that because I spent most of my life in the US, it means I grew up as an American. One problem with this train of thought; I spent most of my life in the US being raised by my mum and Nan, which means I grew up in a Scottish/English home and comparing their approach to raising me with my friends; it was very different. The fact that the US and the UK speak the same language hides the differences, but I am not even a first-generation son of immigrants; I am the immigrant.
What surprises me even after all this time, the US will still feel like a culture shock. In 2020, when the world plunged into a global pandemic, it revealed to me how different I felt. The culture of hyper-individualism that exists here has always felt alien to me. Even among some of my most progressive friends, the mistrust and anti-government sentiment stood out to me from the way I was raised. Yet, it shouldn’t be so surprising to me; all my life, I have always felt like the odd man out, but I suppose you hope that one day the feeling of other subsidies, and for some it does, for me, it hasn’t.
So, why penguins? Because just like a penguin, I don’t fit in anywhere. They are birds but can’t fly. They swim but aren’t like whales, sharks, or fish. They aren’t birds in the traditional sense, and they aren’t fish by any measure, but they carry on doing what they do against hostile environments and long odds. This dual identity is why I blurted out penguins. Pingu introduced me to them as a kid, but it was the years I spent, never quite fitting in anywhere, that endeared me to them. I am a mash-up of two worlds living in a third, just like penguins. I have spent most of my life not fitting in, and at this point, I don’t think I ever will.
