Wow. I am very late in posting for this one. Anyway, before I jump right into my turtle post, I would like to point out that PAUL has not responded to his own prompt. That's right Paulo, I am calling you out.
Anyway, turtles. I actually have quite a few turtley things. Not the real live ones, you understand, but keychains, desk accessories, stationary. My family keeps purchasing them for me, and it's all because of my big mouth.
In my family, people either get married pretty young, or they go totally nuts (in a charming way, of course) and become spinsters. Not joking. I thought spinsters only really existed in the 19th Century. (Ok, practically speaking I knew this wasn't true. But don't you just always imagine spinsters dressed up like Queen Victoria? I do.) Anyway, we Dalstons have our very own spinster. Auntie May. I never met this woman, because she was older than God when my mum was a little girl. I have been told that I am essentially a clone of May, personality-wise. Kindred spirits, if you will. Or maybe I'm the reincarnation of Auntie May. Either way, this does not bode particularly well for me. Plus, I seemed to have inherited every crappy gene from both sides of my family. The allergies, the boobs, and MAYBE, the spinster gene. And, because my family is just like this, they think it's totally hysterical to make fun of me for it. As if my spinster concerns weren't legitimate! It's science, people.
Well, the way I figure it, anything worth doing is worth doing right. I don't want anything to sneak up on me! How embarrassing would it be to be a sub-par spinster? So I figure I need a big house, lots of weird art projects, and a bunch of cats. EXCEPT, I am deathly allergic to cats. So you can imagine I was pretty disconcerted when I remembered that. I immediately called my mother.
Me, in my most dramatic voice: MUM! I am doomed to fail at spinsterhood!
My mother: Toria, you silly bitch, you are 21 years old.
Me: Yeahbut!
My mother pauses, as if she's waiting for me to make an actual point. She has a tendency to do this.
Me: Yeahbut, shouldn't I be prepared for this? What am I going to do? I can't have cats! Which means I'll have to have a turtle, or something. A turtle? How naf!
My mother: A turtle? (I can't really explain it in writing, but she said "A turtle?" in a voice that could only mean "How did I, the most rational person in the world, birth this crazy mofo?")
Me: Yes. It can only be a turtle. And I shall call him Habib. (Um, Toria, wtf?)
The conversation pretty much withered from there, what with my mother being exasperated with me, and calling me a silly bitch a few more times. And that year for Christmas, I received no fewer than four turtles. My mother the joker. At this point, I'm not sure if the turtles represent my future, or my blatant detour from the patented family rationality. If they redid Bridget Jones, I do feel little Habib would figure in prominently. At least he would in the first half of the movie, before Bridget sorts things out with Mark Darcy (rar!). But until Renee Zellwegger starts packing the pounds on again, I will be more than happy to be the Pullman-area supplier of turtle-themed goods.
3 comments:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
found your blog thru locke :)
i'm pretty sure i've had the same conversation with my mother at some point. and by same i mean that at one point her voice was dripping with disgust and the "how could this be my child" statement pretty much broke my heart. oh, and when she called me a bitch she pretty much meant it. sigh. sorry! random outpouring of honesty!
back to you--so at least your mom has a sense of humor (4 turtles, really?) and calls you a silly bitch as a term of endearment. that'll come in handy if you do turn into a spinster :)
So we were reading a chapter from Walter Benjamin's _Illuminations_ and in the notes section, note #6 reads as follows:
"A pedestrian knew how to display his nonchalance provocatively on certain occasions. Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them. If they had had their way, progress would have been obliged to accomodate itself to this pace. But this attitude did not prevail; Taylor, who popularized the watchword 'Down with dawdling!,' carried the day." [poor turtles and their 15 mins of fame]
I immediately thought of this post, put your initials IN PEN in my margins, and showed it to Ben who also proclaimed it "awesome".
Think of all the space I'd have in my brain if I didn't remember every damn thing I've ever seen on the internets.
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