Turtles Don't Laugh

When I was a kid, I would continue to shove food in my mouth, but somewhere along the way, I'd stop swallowing, so my cheeks would bulge out as they became more packed with whatever it was I was continuing to shovel in. I must have been four or five when I had both cheeks stuffed with scrambled eggs from breakfast. I excused myself and headed to the bathroom. Of course, most children would probably spit the food out first into the toilet, but not me. I plopped my butt down on the seat and proceeded to chew what was probably six eggs crammed into my stretched cheeks. Suddenly, I felt a sneeze brewing and out it came before I could take any proactive measures. In the instant following that gargantuan sneeze, I remember humbly sitting there on that cold seat, staring at bits of egg from floor to ceiling, from door to window and everywhere in between. And, I remember the look on my dad's face when he came walking into the bathroom. That look of pure shock ... well, that's about all I remember of that incident.

Speaking of looks of pure shock - the one on my Nana's face when my 6-year-old brother and I (I was about 8) ran home excitedly to tell her we had written our names in the fresh cement in front of one of the neighbor's homes was priceless. Well, four days later after no TV watching, being grounded AND having to empty our little piggy banks to help pay for a new chunk 'o sidewalk, the excitement had clearly faded. We swore we'd never write in fresh cement ever, ever again ... and tell anyone. And, I still don't know where all of our piggy bank money went because the supposedly new chunk 'o cement consisted of a shoddy touch-up job, where you could still faintly make out our names. Years passed. And, all the way up through high school, my brother and I would proudly drag our friends out there and show off the faintly-visible outline of our names, a huge trophy that greatly outshined the four miserable days and empty piggy banks we suffered. I wonder if it is still there ...

And, speaking of sidewalks - same sidewalk, different section - a tree root grew underneath this one portion, pushing the sidewalk up more each year. In the thousands of times my brother and I ran up and down that sidewalk over the years, we took quite a few tumbles as a result of that jutting-up section, but none so severe as on this one certain day.

My neighbor gave me a box turtle, and boy did I love turtles. I was about 7 at the time as I gleefully plopped him into my giant blue bucket and proceeded to skip/run home to show him to Nanny and Grandpop. Well, that darn root and sidewalk ... I tripped as I was hopping along at top speed. I flew one way, the bucket flew another, and that poor little box turtle flew ANOTHER! And there I was suddenly sprawled out like a turtle on it's back, no wait, that was the turtle. I glanced around from my belly-down position to see his little legs helplessly pawing at the sky, the bucket split in half and a deep gash squirting blood from the back of my wrist. Luckily the turtle wasn't injured physically. Emotionally, well, didn't much care for the sight of blue buckets after that ...

And, that gash on my wrist healed into a perfectly round scar that looked like a patch of ringworm. Every other year, my Nan, Grandpop or Dad would notice the scar out of nowhere, forgetting all the previous times before that they had noticed the same scar, and briefly panick that I had ringworm before someone would remember and say, "Oh, that's just a scar," and everyone would laugh - except for the poor turtle. He never laughed.