Larry Appleton has always been a hero of mine. That quirky mess that he was while dealing with ridiculous sitcom dilemmas due to his distant cousin, Balki Bartokomous, from the tiny Greek island of Mypos, made me laugh as well as identify with the guy. Not that I have any chill foreign cousins who did the "Happy Dance" during any small fortunate event. I can identify with Larry's constant irritation. As a girl with two kid sisters and a big brother, I was at least always mildly irritated from the age of eight with small things such as having to do chores, baby sitting and dealing with occasional big brother harassments (like on April Fool's Day, when my brother froze all of my underwear). Certainly, I was known to become flustered, like Larry, and blurt a fist shaking "BALKI!" This being true, it really should go without saying that every Friday night during T.G.I.F., right after "Family Matters," "Step by Step," and "America's Funniest Home Videos," I was watching "Perfect Strangers" to see what types of shenanigans Balki would get Larry into this time.
I admired Larry Appleton so much so that I named my turtle after him. I thought this appropriate because I found Larry upside down in an ant hill, most certainly dead, covered in red ants. A very Appleton-like situation if you ask me: unfortunate from the beginning. After fishing Larry out of the ant hill thinking he would be an interesting specimen to look up in my Wildlife Fact File, I found that he was still very much alive. He appeared as though someone had punched him in the left eye and he could not open it. His shell was a dusty grey with yellow specks and his spine was a dull orange, like the broken lines on the highway. Because of his forlorn and scrappy look, I deemed him Larry. He watched me from inside the shell that he could not close with his one bright, light brown eye as I stared back at him, blinking. He refused to come out.
This was our relationship for the first week. After briefly asking my dad if I could keep the turtle, to which he responded, "Why, are you going to eat it?", and his quick waving "OK," I did my research on what type of turtle Larry could be and what accommodations he would require. I scored my Wildlife Fact File for Larry and could not find his species. After making the educated guess that Larry could not have been a terrapin, for he was no where near water when I found him in his unfortunate position (although I did, in my eight-year-old mind make a conjecture that he quite possibly could have fallen from a low-flying air plane on the way to an unknown location), or a Galapagos Tortoise, because well...from my knowledge, we lived no where near the Galapagos Islands, I turned to the library.
The Neva Lomason Library, just outside of Downtown Carrollton, is a place which, although not resourceful for a scholar, is quite suitable for third grade research. It is a place where, it seems, library research and the worth of knowledge is easily taken for granted because they also offer free computer and internet access, which is what a lot of people end up doing. Upon entry, one may find a cart holding National Geographic magazines dated as early as the 1940s, and savagely priced below their worth. (I purchased an issue of National Geographic from this library that is discussing what MIGHT happen if man were ever able to make it to the moon).
I set to work on Larry research the Saturday afternoon that I went to the library, begrudgingly in charge of my little sister, who wanted nothing more than to sit in the children's section and look at picture books. I grabbed several books on amphibians and reptiles and sat on the large kooshie pillows of the children's section as my sister looked at the pictures of some Madeline book. She would ask me questions every now and again about what Madeline was doing in a particular illustration, and I would make something up as she nodded her bow-ridden head and her pig tails bounced irritatingly.
I found that Larry was not:
A terrapin
A Galapagos tortoise
A Desert tortoise
A Soft-Shelled Turtle
A Sea Turtle
After seeing and reading about box turtles, I decided (independent of actual facts) that Larry was, indeed, a tiny box turtle who couldn't close his shell due to a certain handi-cap inflicted upon him as he lay upside down in the hill full of red ants. Satisfied by this, I gathered my research and found what Larry would want to eat, sleep on and enjoy and decided to establish this climate in a fishbowl on my desk in my bedroom.
Larry, by the time I had figured out his new way of life, had both eyes. We came to an understanding that we didn't have to be friends, but we had to co-exist, and with this understanding, Larry began to come out of his shell, blink, pee and dart this way and that when left to his own devices. I made his fishbowl livable, filled with dirt, moss (to keep the dirt in place) a small "built-in pool" and a hole in which he could sleep (I read that box turtles dug burrows occasionally).
I kept my turtle away from my sisters, for I had read "Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing." Logically, I knew that little kids do not eat turtles and that Judy Bloome had lost her mind when writing the story, but I was still wary. My sister Angela had a reputation for taking out small animals, and I learned my lesson from reading about poor Tribble the turtle, who was devoured by the little brother, Fudge (who should have gotten sick with salmonella). So Larry watched "Perfect Strangers" with me, sitting quietly on my stomach, instead of staying in my room, which I shared with my two sisters.

That Wal*Mart...
"God I hate Georgia. Does everyone have to wear camoflaug hats and shirts?" My sister, on an obvious menstral tangant, blurts out loudly in the middle of the isle at Super Wal*Mart.
I don't bring up the fact that Angela is guilty of wearing camoflaug at one point or another.
"Not everyone is wearing camoflaug," I say, looking around at the people who hear my sister's ranting. As I look around, I count ten people who are wearing camoflauge hats and shirts, and make an observation of my own: two-thirds of these people are undeniably fat.
"They are fat though. Everyone in this Super Wal*Mart is fat as hell," I say, in an honest attempt to make my sister smile through her affliction.
"You're right!" She beams, stooping slightly and giggling just enough so her shoulder-length earrings jiggle. "You're so mean!"
As we wander about the store, I dwell on my not-so-recent observation and my illeged meanness. I've always known that the people who peruse Wal*Mart tend to be over weight, at least in the south. I've never bothered to look at the statistics, nor have I bothered to inquire why this may be so. But to squeeze past people in aisles that are clearly wider than most other grocery store aisles, and to browse the "plus sized" clothing area to find no less than 4X t-shirts featuring Hip-Hop Tweety Bird saying a whimsically pathetic remark like, "Oh no you didn't!" or, "I Just Don't Care," makes one wonder at Wal*Mart's obvious catering to the obese.
Among the above are deal seeking soccer moms who sport two or three shopping carts full of great prices and unbearable screaming children. These aisle-blockers, armed with calculators, large purses and diaper bags, are the heros of our story, loud and present, backhand ready for unruley kids. It is somewhat admirable that these women can juggle so many shopping carts, shush children, and bust through the store victorious that they have saved so much money and speed away in their SUVs and mini vans without a scratch.
I always leave Wal*Mart feeling as though I received a great deal, almost as if I stole something. However, amongst the feeling of saving that extra three dollars that I may have spent at Target, I also get the distinct feeling that I may have become a great deal trashier than I may have been upon entry. Is this mean? Probably. Is this also true? I'm pretty much convinced it is. Do I completely halt my shopping at Wal*Mart? I've tried, but to live in America, it is very hard for one to NOT shop at this store. One can buy groceries, furniture, home and dorm furnishings, soaps, hunting gear and tampons. The necessities that this store offers is luring, at times even more so than my beloved Target.
I choose Target for my shopping most of the time. When one walks into Target, it seems like a breath of fresh air. The walls can be touched without fear of placing a finger in a foreign substance, the floor is walkable, the aisles airy like newly laid streets, and people only sport one buggy featuring one or two screaming, but somehow less venomous, children.

**Something Interesting in the Works**--for my Creative Non-Fiction Independent Study:The room was always vacant, a lieu of possibility that came from indecision and led to storage of soccer equipment and an old prom dress. Smaller in proportion, empty of prospects, this room made it possible for me to have my own bathroom and a guest room when need be. It is on the side of the apartment building that doesn't catch that much light with a view of the mud pit that looked as though a finger slid right through it, creating a stream that raged during rainstorms and flowed steadily between humidity; the Ganges. It was left open a lot, partly because I neglected to close it but mostly because when it was locked up by the master key, I fetched this master key and unlocked it myself. Party at Anisa's: Sleep in "The Room." Store extra crap: "The Room." Friend needs a nap: "The Room." At the peak of its convenience, sometime around Thanksgiving, someone was put there randomly. I cursed the university's residence life office, the hand that slid me my salary.[It's a trying thing when you live with people who you can't live with.]I found that the person being put into the room is someone I had previously spoken to. I was watching a cooking show in September when a knock came. I opened the door to a strawberry blonde curly-haired girl.
"Hey, can I look a the vacant room?" She asks, looking past my shoulder, then noticing the television show, added, "Oh man I love Food Network!"
Had there been no mention of the Food Network, I do think there would have been a problem.
"Sure," I say, half amused but half wanting to not show her because I wanted to keep The Room. She shuffles over through the kitchen to The Room and peeks in.
"It's small. But I guess it would do if I moved in...since you know, it's better than having a room full of people who hate you and are trying to kill you with their cat," the girl said, non-chalantly in an almost playful way. "I am deathly allergic to cats. They can kill me. I'm Melissa."
I introduce myself, and add that I am a resident advisor as well. Most people who I told didn't want to live with an RA, out of paranoia or something. But Melissa seemed more interested in this fact.
"Hey, can you come with me to see the other rooms in this building? I don't want to go alone and then all of these people will think I'm some sort of freak."
I hesitate, but put on my shoes. We proceed to walk the hallways knocking on doors, Melissa chatting the whole time, mostly about food and how she used to be a "fat kid." I was charmed.
"You know what the best thing in the world is?" She chimes, almost bouncing erect, curls about her face.
"What? Cheesecake?"
"No," she almost whispers. "You know those pudding pops? The ones that Bill Cosby made everyone buy? Well the best thing in the world is that thin layer of ice that's coating it. It cracks when you lick it!" Well that sold it. I told her that if she doesn't find another place to stay, that she could move in with us.
She didn't move in with us that September. She chose another room and stayed there until October. She didn't get along with her new room mates either. The rumor was that she did not get along with her room mates because they were black and so it was believed to be a race issue. In mid-October, there was another knock at my door. Melissa stood there and looked at me apologetically.
"Hey. Here I am again."
"Hey, what's up?" I saw the white check-out slip in her hand.
"Well, my new room mates suck so I'm just going to go home and commute."
"Where do you live?" I ask.
"Rockmart," she said, almost embarassingly.
"That's like...an hour and a half away! Why don't you just move in here?"
"It's okay, I don't mind. I just hate dorm living anyways."
I didn't mention the rumor; in fact I forgot about it at first. There seemed to be nothing racist about this girl and she didn't act strange around me.
I ended up checking her out of the room, talking with she and her dad the entire time. I tried to convince them that she should just move in with me instead of the commute, and that they wouldn't get any refunds as it was.
to be cont...

**Something Interesting in the Works**
--for my Creative Non-Fiction Independent Study:

The room was always vacant, a lieu of possibility that came from indecision and led to storage of soccer equipment and an old prom dress. Smaller in proportion, empty of prospects, this room made it possible for me to have my own bathroom and a guest room when need be. It is on the side of the apartment building that doesn't catch that much light with a view of the mud pit that looked as though a finger slid right through it, creating a stream that raged during rainstorms and flowed steadily between humidity; the Ganges. It was left open a lot, partly because I neglected to close it but mostly because when it was locked up by the master key, I fetched this master key and unlocked it myself. Party at Anisa's: Sleep in "The Room." Store extra crap: "The Room." Friend needs a nap: "The Room." At the peak of its convenience, sometime around Thanksgiving, someone was put there randomly. I cursed the university's residence life office, the hand that slid me my salary.
[It's a trying thing when you live with people who you can't live with.]
I found that the person being put into the room is someone I had previously spoken to. I was watching a cooking show in September when a knock came. I opened the door to a strawberry blonde curly-haired girl.
"Hey, can I look a the vacant room?" She asks, looking past my shoulder, then noticing the television show, added, "Oh man I love Food Network!"

**disclaimer...there will SO be clean-up, but it's something I have to deal with right now. Just an improv.**