‘I like turtles’
by Minsoo Ha
There are some moments in your life that you just wish you could forget that they ever happened. Normally, people succeed in doing so, and eventually move on with their lives. It doesn’t matter that you wore your shirt inside out, or got a haircut that made your neck look fat. Even if your fell flat on your face in front of the whole school on stage, people eventually lose interest with time and soon, the people’s attentions will leave on its hunt for another source of entertainment.
In that sense, you could say that I was pretty unlucky. For it wasn’t a couple of hundred people who witnessed my moment of humiliation, but thousands of practically illiterate people in town who had absolutely nothing else to do in but to watch TV at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They also evidently thought that it was too funny not to be shared on YouTube. The video reached 0.5 million hits in less than a week and soon parodies and remixes of it spread through the internet like wildfire.
It was just like any other day at the fair with my sisters when a female reporter swooped down on me with a mike and started talking to me. I have never been comfortable with conversing with total strangers, and the big camera inches from my face didn’t help. I was desperately searching for some kind of help from my sisters and parents when I suddenly noticed that the reporter had stopped talking and looking at me as if she was expecting some kind of an answer. My mind immediately went blank. 10 years of my life had not prepared me for an interview on live television – the most that I had managed to make out from the useless things teachers tried to teach me were ‘never get caught’, which somehow I didn’t think I could apply in this situation.
I just knew I had to say something to get over the moment. The awkward silence and the pressure of standing in a spotlight were more than unbearable. I was literally suffocating in all the suspense. Before I could ponder on the first moment of my debut on national television, I blurted out the only thing that was in my head: the three words which would bring millions of sensations to come.
“I like turtles”
For those who have never been to the Portland Rose Festival and are wondering where on earth ‘turtles’ came in, let me explain. In the fair, there was this display where you could see turtles swimming in a glass tank. Every year, I would watch turtles with yellowish green stripes and turquoise shells just lazing away blinking peacefully in the cool water. I was going through a dinosaur phase then, and every reptilian creature big or small fascinated me. So it seems understandable that a 10 year old boy would, upon sudden approach and at a loss for words, proclaim to the world that he liked turtles. The tragedy was, I was wearing ridiculously disgusting zombie face paint!
You can guess how it must have seemed on TV. A 10 year old zombie being interviewed probably for the first time and answering “Jonathan just got an awesome face paint job. (it really was awesome by the way) What do you think?” with flat, monotonous “I like turtles.” Even the reporter was having trouble suppressing her laughter.
I was so focused on running away from the pressure and the camera that I hadn’t even realized what I had said until the next day when Derek, one of the meanest bullies in my school shouted out, “Hey Jonathan, so you like turtles do you?” guffawing stupidly with his thugs.
Well, I was obviously glad that many people liked my video. I received fan mails from all over the world and there was not one radio station, TV channel, and papers which I didn’t appear. It was almost as if I had become an overnight celebrity! They even printed T shirts with my face on, and I was invited to a few TV shows for quite a considerable amount of cash. (I guess my mom must have been happy) But because of that video, I was teased mercilessly throughout my school life. Every time a teacher asked me a question, everyone else would scream out “I like turtles!” It was quite a labor make myself heard over their sniggers and screams of mirth. I somehow managed to get through with minimum scarring with adequate combination of sarcasm and humor as a defense mechanism, and had a quite a good time making fun of people who made fun of me. Nevertheless, I must say that it was quite a relief going to college where people would be more mature and sophisticated enough to have a better thing to do than asking me whether or not I still liked turtles – or so I thought.
“Hey dude, isn’t that the Turtle Boy?”
Apparently, college students must have had a lot of free time on their hands also. Not three seconds had passed after I had introduced myself to my roommate and I was already marked as the Turtle Boy from his friend a.k.a. a total stranger. Groaning inside, I could to do nothing but watch as my fame as Turtle Boy was blazed back to life. Leaving my roommate and his friend gasping for air (from hysterical laughing) on the floor I went for a walk around the campus.
As I was trying to come up with an offensive homosexual joke just in case those two went over themselves, I noticed a girl crouching near a stream.
“It’s dangerous if you lean that far out.” I said, just out of politeness.
She looked up. “It’s okay, it’s only ankle deep.”
She was right. The reflection of light made it hard to see, but the stream seemed to be quite shallow. Nowhere deep enough to drown anyone larger than a shoe.
“You never know. Better safe than sorry, I always say.” I said automatically.
She burst out laughing. “You sound like my grandmother.”
“Hey, she is a very nice lady! And she makes the most awesome cakes!”
“She passed away last summer.”
“Oh,” I was suddenly lost for words. “Sorry about that. That’s what I do. I make inappropriate jokes and apologize.”
I was relieved to see that she was smiling again.
“So, Mister I-make-inappropriate-jokes-and-apologize, do you have a name?”
“I’m Jonathan. I’m a freshman here. What’s your name?”
The moment she heard name, recognition dawned on her face.
“Oh my god - you’re that Turtle Boy from the ‘I like turtles’ video!”
I knew I should have changed my name before I came here.
Every first conversation I have with other people is amazingly identical to each other. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, they get so excited that usually it takes half an hour to stop talking about my video. The first few times, I tried to change the subject but to no avail. They would ask me to recount the moment of the interview with annoying persistence that I eventually gave up trying all together and accepted the fact that this would be my icebreaker for the rest of my life.
Just as I was resigning to the worst and preparing to start defending myself with how young I was, she asked me something I’ve never expected.
“Do you… still… like turtles?”
I’ve been teased with that familiar phrase for nearly 10 years now, but there was no hint of malice in her voice. She sounded apprehensive and worried that I might be offended. It was as if she was a 10 year old inviting me in on her secret, and a little scared that I might reject her. Not sure what to say, I just said the only thing that was in my head right now.
“...I like turtles.”
