This is a story about a polar bear named Gord. Gord lived in a zoo. All the other animals liked Gord, because Gord was always nice to them.
One day, the zookeeper noticed Gord was acting in a very peculiar way. Gord would go to one spot in his home and lay there for hours, staring at nothing. This kept up, hour after hour, day after day.
The zookeeper got all of his zookeeper friends together and told them what Gord was doing. He asked them, “What’s wrong with Gord?”
“He doesn’t like his food,” suggested one.
“He needs more exercise,” said another.
“Perhaps he needs a bigger place to live,” offered a third.
The zookeeper tried everything. He changed Gord’ meals. He brought in more things for Gord to exercise with. He moved Gord into a bigger place to live. Nothing worked. Gord kept laying in one spot, hour after hour, day after day.
The zookeeper called all his fellow zookeepers. “What should I do now,” he asked them.
“Try putting other bears around him,” they all said.
The zookeeper moved some brown and black bears next to where Gord lived. “Well, that should make things better,” the zookeeper thought. “Now Gord will have other bears around him.”
However, the other bears never talked to Gord. They all talked to each other instead. One of them would just repeat exactly what they heard other animals say, with all the other bears agreeing with everything that was being repeated. This bothered the animals who lived nearby, as they grew tired of this bear copying everything they said and making it sound like it was something they had said on their own. Whenever one of the other animals would ask this bear why that’s all they ever did, a different bear would shout, “Be quiet, you animals! My friend the bear was asked to come over here and talk!” So all the other animals stayed away from this bear.
Another one of the bears had a very loud voice. He was always standing up on his hind legs and yelling, “Look at me! I can do anything I want! I am a great bear!” Then this bear would keep on talking in a loud voice, saying very bad things about the other animals. He said especially bad things about any animal who said nice things about the animals the bear was saying bad things about. So all the other animals stayed very far away from this bear.
Gord stayed away from these bears too, and kept laying in the same spot, hour after hour, day after day.
Now the zookeeper was very worried. He got all of his zookeeper friends back together, and sadly told them what was happening. Some people suggested one thing and some suggested another, but no one could think of anything new to try for Gord. Eventually the room became very quiet.
Then, a voice was heard on the speaker phone in the back of the room. It said, “Why, I know what’s troubling Gord.”
Everyone turned to look at each other.
“Did you invite him to call in?” they said, one to another.
“No,” they all replied to each other. “Did you invite him to call in?”
“No,” the response came. “Do you know who he is?”
“No,” they all replied to each other. “Do you know who he is?”
They all agreed that no one had invited the man to call in, and none of them knew who he was. Then Gord’s zookeeper said to the man, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Gord. I’m here for him.”
The zookeeper was puzzled by this. “But I’m Gord’s zookeeper. I take care of him every day. I’ve never seen you before. How can you be his friend?”
The voice on the speaker phone said, “I am Gord’s friend. I’m here for him. I’m here to help him.”
The zookeeper replied, “Are you a zookeeper?”
“No.”
“Then how can you help him,” said the zookeeper. “All of us in this room are zookeepers. We’ve spent years and years taking care of the animals in our zoos, and we can’t think of a way to help Gord. What makes you think you can?”
“Because I know what’s troubling Gord.”
The zookeeper was beginning to become annoyed. “How can you know what’s wrong with Gord? Everyone in this room has spent years and years taking care of the animals in our zoos. Have you?”
“No.”
“Then how can you tell us what’s wrong with Gord?”
The voice on the speaker phone said, “Do you know what’s troubling Gord?”
“No,” came the sad reply.
“Then it won’t hurt anything if I say something about it, now will it.”
The zookeeper thought about it for a minute, then said, “No, I guess not.”
The voice on the speaker phone said, “What’s troubling Gord is that you’re not treating him with respect.”
This made the zookeeper very angry. He shouted, “What do you mean? Don’t I feed Gord good food every day? I clean where he lives every day. I keep him safe and protected by giving him a good home. How can you say I don’t treat Gord with respect?”
“Because you don’t.”
The zookeeper replied, “And then I moved the other bears next to him so he’d have other bears around.”
“Those bears aren’t like Gord.”
“That’s not my problem,” the zookeeper snapped. “They’re bears, and that should be good enough. If Gord doesn’t like them, then that’s his problem. Besides, you’d think he’d like having them next to him. They’re all bears.”
The man smiled again. “As I already said, those bears aren’t like Gord. And have you ever asked Gord what he wants?”
The zookeeper snorted in disgust, “He’s a polar bear! He can’t tell me what he wants! Besides, he can’t possibly want anything other than what I give him. He has food, a place to live, no enemies, and other bears nearby. What else could he want?”
“Respect.”
“And just how am I supposed to give him this ‘respect’ you’re talking about?”
The voice on the speaker phone replied, “By talking to him, not down to him. You give him respect by asking him what he wants. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate what you are doing for him. But he also wants to know that you don’t think of him as just a polar bear.”
“He IS a polar bear!”
“And that’s the problem,” the voice on the speaker phone continued. “Gord knows who and what he is. But he also knows that he wants more than what he’s being given. He wants to have someone to talk to; someone who will listen to what he has to say and who he can listen to. Someone who respects him, and who he can respect.”
The zookeeper had heard enough. “I don’t have time for such silliness. I am a zookeeper. He is a polar bear. I don’t talk to polar bears, because polar bears have nothing to say to me. He should be perfectly happy with everything I’ve given him. If he wants to lay around and mope, that’s his problem.” With that the zookeeper left, all the other zookeepers following him out of the room as they talked to each other about this strange man who obviously didn’t know anything.
“Well, I tried,” the voice on the speaker phone said to himself. “Guess I might as well go back.” With that, Gord hung up the phone in the zookeeper’s office he had been speaking into and left, closing the door behind him as he went back to his home in the zoo.
