Saturday, November 10

For Zippy

Day 10 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use the phrase "Has anyone seen my turtle?"):

I relaxed in my JetBlue seat—I guess indie financing meant indie travel accommodations; no first class on this trip—and tried to distract myself from Port St. Lucie. In July.

Of course, I didn’t need to distract myself. A few moments had passed when I suddenly felt something poking at my feet. “Hey!” I said, pulling my feet up into my seat.
A boy no more than seven years old poked his head up. “Have you seen my turtle?” he asked.

“There are turtles on this plane?” I asked, unsure whether or not to be disgusted. I’m not so much an animal person. Oh, I’m happy to pet the occasional dog in the park and I’ll tolerate friends’ cats, but animals are not creatures with whom I’d choose to spend my time. The idea of a rodent reptile (for all animals basically struck me as rodent like) nosing around my carry-on bag kind of turned my stomach a little.

“Just my turtle. He’s—”

Before he could finish his thought, a tall, severe flight attendant with a bun tightly pulled across her blond hair, dashed down the aisle. She towered over him and a shadow must have cast over the floor he was scouring because he looked up.

“Hey!” he yelled out. “Be careful. Don’t step on my turtle!”

She merely scowled and pointed at the fasten seat belt sign. He began, “I’m just—” but she jabbed her finger in the air menacingly, sending him scurrying him back to his seat three rows up. Straddling the line between sexy and scary, she was the type of woman who in six years could easily appear in his nightmares—or perhaps his dreams, depending which way he floated—dressed in a school uniform or a nun’s outfit, brandishing a ruler.

As soon as the fasten seat belts sign chimed off, the boy hopped back up and began scanning the aisles, attempting to crawl his way up for a turtle eye view.
I decided to take a nap and try to forget about everything. Forget about the film shoot. Forget about Gary in Paris, the most romantic of cities, with me in Port St. Lucie, the most sweltering of cities. Forget about my brother. Forget, forget, forget. I attempted a nap for about three nanoseconds when a the boy got near my row again, calling out, “Have you seen my turtle? Has anyone seen my turtle?” I propped open a slit of an eye to see him eyeball to eyeball with me. “Have you seen my turtle? He’s small and green and he answers to the name Kermit.”

“Isn’t Kermit a frog?” I asked him.

The boy scoffed. “Clearly you have no imagination.”

I tried to go back to sleep but there was just enough turbulence to ensure I stayed awake. I bought a lunch, settled into my seat to watch a couple hours of Cartoon Network, and mindlessly twirled a strand of hair around my finger.

Finally, we landed. I stood up and reached up to grab my suitcase. As I swung it down, I took a step forward, and out sounded a crack that was loud enough if might have been the shot heard ‘round the world. The silence immediately quieted as everyone turned to stare at me,

I was afraid to look down. I wanted to just walk off that plane, with my head held high, and go and work on a movie set, a job that was probably the envy of most of the folks on the plane, folks who are fooled into thinking it’s all fun and games and that we really just sit around and laugh all the time. But instead, I need to know what I had crunched beneath my Doc Marten. Looking down, sure enough, there he was: Kermit. Who knew a shell could be flattened like that?

I leaned down to look at him. “Get up,” I hissed at the turtle. “Get up!” Needless to say, there was no movement.

“What did you do?” scolded an older woman behind me. In front of me was an older man who pretended the whole thing never happened.
Next to me was a college aged boy who commented, “Whoa! The totally weird thing is, I was just debating with my roommates if a turtle shell would crunch or not. We all agreed it wouldn’t because it’s shell is so hard. It’d be like crushing your tooth! But, dude! Empirical evidence! They do crunch!”

I quickly used my foot to scoot the evidence out of the aisle and beneath a seat. I stand uncomfortably, not saying anything, waiting for the line of bodies to move out of the plane. When I do finally disembark, at the end of the gangplank is the boy with a senior-looking airline official. The boys parents are behind him and even they look distraught. The boy has tear tracks on his cheeks and the official has an arm around his shoulder. I can clearly hear him saying, “Don’t worry. As soon as everyone’s off the plane, we can go look for Kermit. We’ll find him.”

I say nothing and just head for baggage claim. Good thing I don’t believe in omens. I don’t believe in them. Right?

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1 Comments:

Blogger Zippy said...

Very nice indeed!

8:08 PM  

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