Penguin Teeth

When I was in elementary school our school news featured a weekly brainteaser question, a different one for every grade. The student, or students, who answered correctly received some kind of small plastic trinket or candy. I was in third grade then and considered myself pretty clever for my age group. My young heart skipped a beat when they announced the category: Animals. Animals were my specialty. I had every dang issue of Zoo Books magazine known to 90's children and I had perused multiple discovery kids books on all things that crawl, fly, and swim. Whatever the question was, that prize was surely mine!
I remember practically twitching with anticipation in the seconds between category and question. I clenched the edges of my hard plastic chair and leaned forward as if somehow being closer to the T.V. would elicit a faster reading.  "here it comes..."

And the big brainteaser question for all the third graders

"How many teeth do penguins have?"

I inhaled sharply, feeling the sting of doubt in the pit of my PB and J laden tummy. I knew plenty about penguins. I knew the parents took turns guarding the egg, I knew they huddled together for warmth, I knew they ate fish and slid on their bellies, and I knew they lived in Antarctica, but I could not for the life of me recall how many teeth they had! I don't think I had ever read anything about their teeth! I frantically searched the traperkeepers of my mind for every image of penguins I had ever seen but still, no teeth! I was grasping at straws. I felt the answer was there somewhere, I had to know it but it just would not come! I began to get angry as I imagined another third grader in a distant classroom scrawling down the correct answer with ease. It just wasn't fair! The person with the right answer was probably an eskimo exchange student. He was probably straight from Antarctica. He probably had the chance to casually count penguin teeth over his weekends! What cruel fate! I knew I couldn't possibly match up to that but I was determined to try. I had to give it my best guess!  I wiped the beads of sweat from my brow, grasped my pencil with concrete resolve and boldly etched my answer into the stark white paper.

"32"