I was hanging out with my support worker Will the other day when I had quite a long ‘ticcing fit’ and Will eventually gave me my emergency medication. I’ve explained before that the mix of this and my regular medication, can make me quite giggly and silly.

Will was worried about my hands banging on the floor so he reached for my big blue boxing gloves that I use when this is happening. He could only find one so he put one of my regular black and white gloves on the other hand. With the small amount of speech I had during the fit I declared this one to be my penguin and I started laughing hysterically.

No matter what questions Will asked me my tics re-interpreted them as being about my ‘penguin hand’. Despite the fit being painful I was completely preoccupied with talking about my new penguin. Regular readers won’t be surprised by this because my tics have a bit of a thing about penguins.

In the end Will tucked my ‘penguin hand’ out of sight under his leg. This calmed things down a little but the rest of the fit was periodically punctuated by accusations that ‘Will’s squashing the penguin’ and ‘The penguin’s been banished to the bat-cave.’

At the end of the fit Will replaced the big blue glove with the second black and white one and I sat happily with my two penguin hands until the effects of the medication wore off.