T-U-R-T-L-E POWER

I’ve always been pretty adorable.  Ask anyone.  Well, some people might not know what the hell they're talking about, but ask most people.  I've never been good-looking in any traditional sense, but it's never really mattered.  I'm charming as shit, and because I look like a giant newborn, people naturally assume I'm a sweetheart.  That assumption is wrong though, and I'm going to tell you a story that proves it.

Back when I was about 9 or 10 years old, my then-teenage cousin (who’s always been a real sweetheart, and that's no assumption) decided that she and her friend would come out to my house and babysit my sister and I for the day.  It was during the summer.  I'm not sure what happened to our regular babysitter, but my Mom told my cousin and her friend that they were welcome to come out and take care of us for a day.

My sister was usually pretty well-behaved, so was I actually, but every now and then I would get this really strange feeling, like I had to do something crazy, silly, ridiculous, and/or just plain irritating.  [I still get this feeling actually, only now fewer people chalk it up to hyperactivity, and more people tend to lean towards it being a psychosis of some kind.]  Anyway, I could feel that weird feeling bubbling up inside me, and before anyone knew what was happening, I went fucking batshit.

Within minutes I was chewing on plastic Barbie-doll shoes while jumping rope on the couch.  I was spiking volleyballs off of the inside of the living-room windows, power-driving Frisbees at the china cabinet, and using a Skip-it (a plastic flail you could wear on your ankle) to try and footsweep my little sister.  I went on like this for a while, and because so much of what I was doing involved antagonizing my sister, she started to throw a noteworthy little tantrum all on her own.

It was a madhouse.

My cousin and her friend were completely blindsided by my peculiar little episode.  Their first little trial-run at the babysitting career they had no doubt hoped to start had failed miserably.  I tore around the house like the Tasmanian Devil for nearly an hour before I started to lose steam.  By that point, the babysitters were on their last legs as well.  When they demanded my sister and I go to our rooms and stay there until our parents got home, we did what we were told.

In a silly attempt to extend an olive branch, my cousin and her friend drew little flowers and hearts on the chalkboard that hung between my sister and I’s rooms.  They wrote “We Love You!” on it in the hopes of burying the hatchet I guess.  I snuck out of my room, wiped the board clean with my sleeve, and drew a large Satan with the words “We don’t love you!” written in a fiery font below it.

Those poor girls were sitting on the couch in the living room, probably feeling all impressed with how well they had handled me with their send-him-to-his-room technique.  No doubt they were talking about just how hard babysitting was, and then congratulating one another on how well they had done.  They hadn't even seen my chalkboard Satan yet, and what they didn't know was that I had about six-and-a-half dollars worth of penny candy in my room.  I was down there, jumping up and down on my bed, handfulling gummy candy into my face, and chanting “T-U-R-T-L-E  POWER” over and over and over while I waited for my blood-sugar levels to lift me up into another manic state.

It was about 30 minutes later when I exploded out of my room.  Those walls and that door couldn't contain me.  The girls tried to stop me in the hallway, but I used all the Turtle Power I had been building up and broke right through them.  They couldn’t stop me when I was like this, nothing could.  I ran loops through the house, dodging them, throwing things, knocking shit over, and wreaking whatever other havoc I could.  I wasn't even a child anymore.  I was like a fucking poltergeist you could see. 

I made a break for the door and managed to get out onto the front lawn.  My cousin tried to chase me down, but I made it to my bicycle and managed to pedal away from her.  It was a close call, pedaling was hard as I could barely breathe through all the hysterical laughter that was coming out of me.  My cousin and her friend stood on the lawn and screamed at me to come back, but I kept pedaling.  I went down the hill, across the stretch, and all the way to “the corner” (which was as far as I was allowed to go).  Then I kept going. 

As soon as I rounded “the corner”, I could hear the girls’ screams increase in pitch and volume.  They sounded desperate.  To listen to them, you would have thought I was pedaling into a live volcano or something.  It was kind of hard to hear them through my laughter, which I still had absolutely no control over.  I pedaled up a hill, and then disappeared into the trees as the road left my neighborhood.  Knowing I was out of sight, I got off my bike and snuck back through the trees so I could see my house.  The girls were standing on the lawn crying.  They thought I had run away.  Hilarious!

I hung out in the trees for a while, before deciding to head back home.  I got into the driveway when my cousin leaned out the door and told me to get inside.  I could see her eyes were all puffy and red, so were her friend's eyes. 

"We didn't know where you went!" my cousin yelled.

She had started to cry again, and I was almost starting to feel kind of guilty about the whole thing, but for the goddamn life of me I couldn't stop laughing!

"I'm glad you think it's so funny," she said angrily, "because I had to call my Mom and Dad, and they’re on their way here right now to look for you…annnnd they called your Mom and Dad to tell them to come home too."

Shit had gotten REAL!

"WHAT?!" I roared, "You called your parents?!  Why?  I was just joking around!"

"We didn't know that!!" the friend spat at me.

"Call them back, tell them I was just joking" I demanded.

"We tried when we seen you were coming back," her friend informed me, "they already left".

I had to think of a plan. 

I went down to my room and tidied it up, surely that would help.  I did some chores today, that's had to count for something, right? 

"Oh, and we told Mom about your little chalkboard drawing" my cousin yelled down the hallway to me.

GOD-DOUBLE-DAMMIT.  I wasn't supposed to draw the devil.  I was in so much shit!

I erased the Satan on the chalkboard, and then went around the house tidying up the mess I had made.  The girls followed me around with their arms folded, looking all smug like they had beaten me.  I just ignored them, I didn’t have time for their shit.

Once the house was tidy, I went down to my room and waited.  The anticipation was awful.  My aunt and uncle arrived, and my aunt even popped her head in my bedroom door and told me that I owed the girls an apology.  She was pissed, I could tell.  I apologized to the girls and then went back to my room.  I was in my room when I heard my father's motorcycle coming down the road. 

Jesus, even his bike sounded angry.

When he came in the house, he apologized to my aunt and uncle and my cousin and her friend and assured them he would punish me.  When I heard his boots coming down the hallway and I panicked.

"PLAY DEAD MOTHERFUCKER!" my brain screamed at me.

So I did.  I dove into bed with superhuman speed and pretended to be asleep.  To my credit, I think I did an excellent job of having that slack-faced "I'm actually asleep" look, but I guess my Dad figured there was no reason for me to be sound asleep at 2:30pm on a summer day.

"Don't you try to pull that shit with me, get out into that living room, NOW!" he said in his creepy-calm voice.

Like an asshole, I pretended to wake up.

"W-what?" I said sleepily, and followed it with a big yawn.

"Keep pushing....you just go ahead and keep pushing!" said the creepy axe-murderer wearing my Dad's body.

My sister (who was in trouble even though she was innocent of most of the charges) and I were marched out to the living room where a jury of the people I had irritated the piss out of told me how much trouble I caused.  We both apologized again, and then my aunt, uncle, cousin, and cousin's friend left.

My Dad informed me that we were both to be grounded for a month.  We would not be allowed to watch our favorite TV shows for the rest of the summer, and we would have to spend the evening scrubbing the side of the house.

Tough punishment, but when it came to scrubbing the house the joke was on him.  I still had like 3 hours worth of Turtle Power left.

It was fucking easy.