I use to believe in "Turtle Power!"

I wanted to choose a turtle as my picture for this blog, but I couldn't find any that was just right. In general, I've always liked turtles.

I think my love of turtles started with The Teenage Mutant Nunja Turtles. I remember begging my mother for a turtle, just to forget about it after a few days of bringing it home.

The funny thing is how resilient turtles are in general. Everyone always talks about how turtles can just about live forever, but maybe that's because they are pretty strong little reptiles.

We got the turtle and put it in the tank for maybe a bit. After that my older brother and I had to take it out to touch it and play with it. Yeah, this was definitely no dog but when you're a kid you always want to touch stuff. It must be nuts to have no sense of touch. I mean, we may rely on all our senses, but I feel that kids rely even more on their sense of touch. That's why you need to hide all delicate stuff from kids, because of their innate need to touch new things.

So, we got the turtle and just let it loose in our small New York City apartment. The turtle, whose name I completely forgot, then disappeared. It went around the house as if it was in some South American beach, just completely free. We'd see it pop up all over the house: in the bathroom, in the kitchen, sometimes it'd meander by the livingroom while we were watching cartoons. It was completely carefree. I suppose we weren't the best pet owners. Sometimes we'd put it back in the tank, just to let it loose again within a couple of days.

You'd wonder what a turtle eats in a New York City apartment when not fed. I wonder too. I've always imagine that the poor thing was just stuffing itself with led, or sheetrock scraps, or even cockroaches (though I don't think turtles eat cockroaches). Needless to say, eventually the turtle disappeared and was never seen again.

We got one more turtle after that, it didn't fare any better.

I kept watching "The Teenage Mutant Njnja Turtles." I loved that show. My favorite was Michael Angelo. He was just so cool, so California, so American. I've always found it funny how some people think that immigrants have no interest in assimilating. Maybe some of us can't because of religious reasons, they get here when they're too old, or sometimes fear in general. As for the majority of us? We can't wait to shed out fobbiness!! (FOB= Fresh off the Boat) I mean, I still get happy when people comment on how I have absolutely no accent (which is not true, I'm sure I sound like some "valley girl" sometimes).

I learned English by watching cartoons. I'd sing along the opening songs to every Disney Afternoon cartoon: Duck Tails, Chip n Dale, Gummy Bears. Looking back on it, Im certain now it took me a while to get the lyrics. But it didn't matter that I didn't understand everything, I was in cartoon heaven. I guess it's the same reason why people watch Spanish soaps and variety shows, though the half naked women dressed to the 9 and gesturing like they were puppets has little to do with it.