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LJ Idol, Season 9, Week 10






Ad from PetHelp.com.



FREE PENGUIN: 1 owner, good cond., generally friendly.
Contact: #####@gmail.com or call (555) 259-xxxx after 6:00 pm.

The following text was attached as a .pdf file with the ad.

So far, no one wants our son’s penguin, but too many of you called just to find out why we’re giving it away. After reading this, if you want the penguin, contact us; if not, fine.

Albert was our only child. He was a great kid -- smart, funny, popular, but with a kind heart. Al wanted to build things; he graduated from college with a degree in civil engineering. He was dating a nice girl, and we thought they might get married. The war ended all that.

Al was drafted when he finished college. We hoped the Army would make him a mechanic, but he was put in the infantry. He wrote a lot of letters at first, but the letters slowed down after awhile, got shorter, and then stopped altogether.

Finally, his four years were up and Al came home. The war had ruined him. It did that to a lot of kids, but Al was our son. Al would never talk to us about the war. He said he wanted to protect us, but Al wouldn’t talk to anyone about it, not even other soldiers.

After he was discharged, Al lived with us until we couldn’t take it anymore. He looked hard for work, but no one wanted to hire a beginning engineer whose only experience was killing people. He didn’t blame them. Al looked for other jobs, then finally for anything at all.

That’s when his drinking started. He didn’t drink much before joining the Army, but he was a grown man, and if he wanted a few beers, or to spend time at a bar, who could blame him? Before too long, Al was spending his days in his room and his nights in bars.

Our son kept going downhill, but he refused to let us help him. We told Al we were worried, which just made him mad. We thought about the VA or some veterans’ group, but he wouldn’t go. Later, the violence started. Al went from arrests for drunk-driving to drunk-and-disorderly to criminal assault. He nearly beat a man to death outside a bar, and had to go to jail.

We didn’t know what to do to. We started going to a group for parents of veterans. The counselor said we were enabling Al, and for our own safety he had to leave. We rented a cheap apartment and told Al that when he got out of jail, he had to live there. All he said was to leave him alone.

With his veteran’s pension, Al had enough to keep himself together; still, we were his parents, so we sometimes took him a few groceries, but when he threw them at us we had to stop. Al got kicked out of all the bars, so he bought cheap booze and drank alone. He was one step from the streets and there didn’t seem to be anything we could do.

Then the penguin showed up.

We went to visit Al one day, and were shocked to see a small penguin in the bathtub -- Al told us he didn’t know where it came from. He’d been on a bender, so everything was pretty vague. Al thought he'd traded an old Army knife for it, because the knife was missing. When we told Al he couldn’t keep a penguin in an apartment, he got angry and we had to leave.

Several days later, we found out why Al wanted the penguin. A friend called: Al was panhandling on a street corner, with a penguin on a rope and a cardboard sign reading “Help Feed My Penguin.” We knew he was just looking for drinking money, but we had an idea: would Al let us help the penguin, and maybe help him in the bargain?

The next day, we told Al we knew about the panhandling and that he couldn’t treat his penguin that way. We waited for the anger, but it didn’t come. We told him we would let the penguin live at our cabin if Al would come along to care for him, and build a real penguin house.

We thought that even if the penguin was just being used as a meal ticket, Al might agree. He didn’t say anything – just told us to get out.

We were surprised when Al showed up a week later with the penguin. He admitted the penguin needed help. Al had an idea for a penguin house with a pool. He wanted some tools and building materials, but he said he would pay us back. We bought everything on his list, and then drove up to the cabin. We dropped it all off, but before we left, we told Al we’d be back in a week to check on the penguin.

After one week, the penguin looked healthier. Al had started a large enclosure and staked out the penguin house and pool sites. He looked a little better, too; we knew he was still drinking a lot, but we weren’t expecting miracles. At two weeks, the penguin was flourishing and Al continued to improve. He had started digging the pool. Things were about the same on our third visit, which was a little disappointing, but Al had been working hard up until then.

It all fell apart by our fourth visit. The penguin was outside the enclosure, no work had been done, and Al was nowhere to be found. A neighbor told us that last night he had seen Al walking on the highway, headed south. The only thing in that direction was Steve’s Tavern.

Two days later, we received a letter from Al. All he wrote was, “Please take care of the penguin until I get back.” We don’t know where he went or why, but we don’t think he’ll make it back.  No matter how much we love our son, we can’t help him if he doesn’t want it -- all we can do is hope, until even the hope dies.

Thankfully, Al left the penguin behind, and it needs a good home. We’re too old to take care of it ourselves. Now you know enough to decide if you want the penguin, so contact us if you’re interested. We will be happy to talk with you about the penguin, but not our son – that part is simply too painful. This way, we don’t have to tell his story anymore.