Ollie the octopus lived in an ordinary part of the ocean, in an overgrown garden of orange coral and olive-green seaweed.
It was a perfectly wonderful place to live. Ollie thought so every morning when he opened his eight eyes and looked around at all the things he had to do.
And there were so very many things to do.
You see, Ollie had eight arms. And each arm had its own idea of what to do first.
"I am outrageously productive," said Ollie, optimistically.
By one o'clock in the afternoon, Ollie observed something odd.
The stones were not sorted. The book was not finished. The orange was not delivered. The line was not untangled. The ode had not one word on the page. The crab had wandered off. And the stones had got mixed up again.
Arm Eight was still waving. At least something was finished.
How had an entire morning gone by? Ollie couldn't figure it out. He had been so occupied. He had been going and going and going. And yet — nothing was done.
Just then, Otto the otter floated by on his back, looking extremely unbothered, one paw tucked behind his head.
"Ollie!" said Otto. "Oh, you look a bit — overwhelmed."
"I am absolutely fine," said Ollie. He accidentally dropped the stone, knocked over the book, and poked himself with the fishing line.
"You offered me an orange this morning," said Otto, helpfully.
"I know!" said Ollie. "I remember offering it. It is still being offered. The offering is ongoing."
Otto looked at the squashed orange at the bottom of the sea floor. He said nothing. He was a very good friend.
"The other animals always seem to finish things," said Ollie, quietly.
He watched a clam close herself up, neatly, with a little click. He watched a sea turtle swim from one place to the next in a long, smooth, orderly line.
"I always open things," said Ollie. "Oceans of things. But I never seem to reach the end of any of them."
He looked at all eight arms. They were still moving. Even now, arm four was organizing a small pile of pebbles that nobody had asked for.
"Why," he asked, "can't I just be more... ordinary?"
A long, quiet ocean moment passed.
Otto the otter thought for a moment. He was not the cleverest otter in the ocean. But he was an excellent noticer.
"Ollie," he said, "do you know what happened this morning while you were doing everything at once?"
Ollie shook his head.
"You offered me an orange. And that made me smile, and I stopped feeling lonely. You observed that funny crab — and he saw you watching, and it made him feel interesting. You started writing an ode — and even though you only wrote three words, they were excellent words."
Ollie blinked all eight eyes.
"Ordinary creatures do one thing," said Otto. "But you notice everything. And that isn't a problem, Ollie. That's just your kind of ocean."
Ollie thought about this for quite a long time. Or possibly a short time. It was difficult to say — arm six had gotten distracted by a glittering bit of shell and he'd followed it for a while.
But somewhere in the middle of following the shell and thinking about the ode and wondering about the crab — he felt something warm float through him.
Like sunlight from the surface, coming all the way down.
He had eight arms because he had eight kinds of wonder. Not because something was wrong with him.
That evening, he sorted one stone. Just one.
He put it on the shelf.
It was orange. It was oval. It was quite obviously the most outstanding stone he'd ever seen.
Arm Eight waved.
It had always known.
Ollie went to sleep that night, all eight arms gently swaying in the current, dreaming of oranges and odes and a very excellent, oddly-waving arm.
Some children's brains move like Ollie's — fast, curious, multi-directional, and full of spark. They may feel behind, broken, or "too much" compared to children who seem to swim in straighter lines. This story is for them. It doesn't use any labels or fix anything. It just lets them see a small, joyful octopus who is exactly as wonderful as he is — all eight arms included.
Every word in this book that starts with O — and what they mean!