The Turtle Who Lived in a Factory

At one point in time, several years ago, my sisters and I all didn't work during the day. We also thought since we didn't work that we were rich enough to go to the movies every single Sunday that year. This was a good time in our lives. During the summer they would bring the kids over to my moms house where I was living at the time. We would sit outside in the sun, eat grinders and watch Days of Our Lives almost every day. We always got the same thing....an Italian with no tomatoes.

One day we decided to venture out for one reason or another. I was driving, Carrianne in the front seat and Michelle in the middle of the two car seats in back with the kids. We drove down the street that has Saint Gobain (AKA Norton Company) on either side. If you aren't local, it is a huge smelly factory that we grew up near and most everyone in Worcester knows someone who works there.

So there we were driving, probably bopping around to the new cool song, Say My Name by Destiny's Child. It was a drama free day until we saw something walking across the road at a particularly slow pace. I slowed down and realized it was a poor, helpless turtle in the road...stuck between the two sections of the smelly factory.

Before this event, we had recently pulled over on the highway to let someone who's car broke down use one of our cell phones. We apparently thought we were just amazing, selfless people after this and while still buzzing from our random act of kindness, we vowed for it to be our duty to help out mankind in any way possible way from that point on. I guess on the day we saw the turtle we thought "mankind" would also include cute little animals in danger.

We stopped the car dead in the road and my sister Michelle ran out and got the turtle. We said things like, "don't be scared little turtle" and "we'll get you away from the smelly factory back to a lake where you can swim freely and be a happy little turtle with no worries". We are SUCH good people, aren't we? We always think of others. Our mom was right...we ARE the best kids in the world.

All was well...at first. The turtle was in its shell because the he obviously didn't know we were trying to help him. But he'd be thankful after we got him to Indian Lake. All of a sudden his head started to come out of the shell. He started hissing at Michelle who was holding him. She starts yelling and it starts SNAPPING at her! Her high pitched screaming triggered the kids to start screaming and crying really loudly. The little turtles head was stretching with all of it's might to bite at Michelle's hand. We realized at this point that this turtle....was an asshole.

Finally, she throws the turtle on the floor of my car and it starts crawling under my seat. This little bit of information triggers ME to start screaming because I have flip flops on and I am scared the turtle will "get my feetsies"! So I start yelling, "PICK IT UP, PICK IT UP". Michelle refused. So I pulled the car over to the side of the road which was a couple of streets away from the glorious turtle paradise that we call Indian Lake. We all took a deep breath (kids still balling their eyes out) and lightly chucked the turtle onto the side of the road. We calmed the kids down and drove back to my mom's house.

We thought afterwards that the turtle was probably happy at the factory. We probably dragged it away from it's two headed mommy turtle. We definitely did more bad than good that day.

Long story short...we never helped another turtle again.