Dreaming of blue turtles

Out for a stroll
Toronto, ON
March 2016
Thematic. Take a walk. Here.

A long time ago, in a childhood suburb far, far away, I had a pet turtle. She - we assume she was a she - was named "Turdle" because she wasn't mine first. I inherited her from an older brother who went off to school, and within a short period of time she grew from tiny-sized to large enough to outgrow two enclosures.

Even when she was living in a 25-gallon aquarium, she was rather adept at escaping, and my wife - who was then my girlfriend - still laughs at the memories of returning to the house and realizing she was gone. The floor was covered with a thick, shaggy carpet best described as what happens when a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle has a bad burrito for breakfast and hurls the result all over the floor. In other words, the perfect blue-green camouflage for a turtle.

So we'd get on the bed, hang ourselves over the edge and gently feel down to the floor as we quietly called her name. Good times, and not exactly textbook procedure to get the girl. But she married me, anyway, so it all worked out in the end.

Fast forward to last night, where we found ourselves at a large party with lots of folks we know. Not just a party, but a jungle-themed party. Cool, we thought, as we scanned the lovely decorations and reconnected with friends we hadn't seen in a while. Before long, smiling t-shirt-clad people emerged holding a variety of animals: A parrot named Elmo, a small crocodile-like lizard with a taped-up mouth, a ginormous snake with a very open and accessible mouth, and the turtle you see here.

Being the idiot that I am, I gravitated toward this beautiful shelled creature as he happily wandered the floor in the main lobby. The blue-green shag carpeting may as well have been gone for decades, but for a moment it felt like my teenaged self was hanging around my teenaged girlfriend in a faraway place where our biggest worry was whether the turtle had gotten stuck beside the shoebox under my desk. Life has a funny way of circling back on itself, doesn't it?

Your turn: This turtle needs a name. What should this name be?

Related:

Vignette: Turtle Diary