202. Penguin Power

I skimmed my list for possible grammatical or spelling errors but found none, I checked to if any themes were written more than once but still I found no imperfections.
“Would could possibly be wrong with the list Katie?”
She looked at me with an expression of sheer horror, as if I had suddenly grown wings or stuck my entire left foot in my mouth. She simply shook her head to shake off the surprise of my inquiry,
“How could you not see what’s wrong with it, look harder I swear you’ll find it.”

Not long ago my good friend Katie and I had had that simple conversation concerning my list of themes. We had been sitting on a couple of beanbag chairs in the confines of my rooms eating snacks and working on homework etc. She had busied herself with critiquing some of the posters on my wall while I worked on extending the list. My designs all had some sort of theme (whether it is a color or item) and they were strewn across my powder blue wall. I remember it was right around the time when I has started leaning back in the chair (which provided absolutely no support) until my hair black hair had fallen onto the white carpet. After that I just stood and decided to find a more comfortable position on the bed while she reviewed my list when suddenly my list “flew” into my face. She never did admit she had thrown it but instead demanded that I correct it.
“Can’t you see there’s obviously something wrong with it?”

I finally finished reviewing the list for the twelfth time and inquired again,
“What’s wrong with it?”
Katie simply shook off the inquiry, her answer was always vague or simply not there. Tons of times she had simply replied telling me to look harder but I couldn’t figure out what was irking her.
“Is it something that relates to you personally that irks you about this list?”
She sighed and dug through the confines of her head for a proper answer without giving me the valuable information required to fix the list.
“You’re very close. Look at the list again and you tell me.”
Now I was the one getting irked about her constant vague responses. I sighed and thought about Katie in general…She likes penguins…Her room has penguins all over…She likes cold whether…She protests against polar bears cause she thinks they kill penguins…She likes snow…She like penguin movies…
“Is the list missing something?”
I hoped perhaps she would finally inform me of the fault of my list.
“Yes, but you tell me what is it missing Jenny?”
I gave her the evil eye as she called me by my uncommon nickname,
“Don’t ever call “Jenny” again. You know very well I hate that name.”
I cringed at the name as I replied to her bitterly; she of all people should know how much I hate my first name. Even in a diminutive form that name really bugged me.
“That’s beside the point, what missing Jay?”
I settled a bit, that name was better. It reminded me more of birds and blue jays than my real name.
“Is it missing something about penguins?”
She rolled her eyes at me jokingly and replied sarcastically,
“Nah, really? Of course it was missing something about penguins! How you missed that is simply a miracle. You never cease to amaze me.”
I sighed and wrote “201. Penguin Power” at the bottom of the page in my messy scrawl, it didn’t look much like print. More like a mixture between cursive and print, the letters were obviously print versions of cursive, but they were all connected slightly. I handed her the list and knew I just had to ask,
“Are you happy now?”
Three friggin’ hours over something so simple, I’m pretty sure only I could be that dense.
“Yes, yes I am.”
She smirked smugly and leaned back in her bean bag chair like I had done before using her hands as a pillow to keep her short blond hair off my carpet. She knew I was like obsessive compulsive disorder to the max when it came to keeping my floor nice and clean.
“All that over something so simple, jeez Katie, you know you could’ve just dropped it? But, no you had to annoy me for nearly three hours just to get the point across that penguins deserve a position on the list. Care to tell to tell me why penguins should be there?”
She rolled her eyes again and simply said,
“Cause penguins are awesome.”