{"id":901,"date":"2015-05-12T18:37:52","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T18:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/?p=901"},"modified":"2015-05-12T18:37:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T18:37:52","slug":"1-my-first-pet-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/1-my-first-pet-4\/","title":{"rendered":"#1 My First Pet"},"content":{"rendered":"

My First Pet\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"red<\/a>
\nWhen I was a young boy, like many young boys, I wanted a dog.
\nI grew-up watching Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin, TV shows about boys and their faithful dogs.
\nThat would be so cool\u2026 having my very own dog. A boy\u2019s best friend!
\nSo I asked my father if I could get a puppy.
\nEven at that young age he knew me all too well.
\nMy dad said, \u201cDogs are great, Paul, but having a dog is a lot of responsibility\u2026 and I don\u2019t think you could handle it.\u201d
\nI pleaded with him\u2026 \u201cYes I can, dad! I\u2019ll take of him, I promise I will. Pleeease!!!\u201d
\nMy father said, \u201cWe\u2019ll see, Paul.\u201d
\nI kept haunting my dad for a dog until a few weeks later, when my dad took me to the Barnum & Bailey Circus in Boston. For some reason back then they were selling small pets, like lizards and turtles, at a booth outside the tent and my father caught me looking at the reptiles.
\nHe said, \u201cPaul, how about I buy you a turtle and, if you do a good job taking care of the turtle and show me that you can be responsible, I\u2019ll think about getting you a dog.\u201d
\nI was psyched. \u201cReally dad? You\u2019ll see\u2026 I\u2019ll show you I can take care of him.\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll see. You\u2019ll have to prove it to me, Paul.\u201d
\n\u201cI will, dad. I promise!\u201d
\nHe said, \u201cWell son, pick one out.\u201d
\nAll the turtles looked exactly the same, but I immediately pointed at the feistiest one of the bunch and said, \u201cThat one! And I already have a name for him\u2026 Tommy\u2026 Tommy the Turtle\u2026 and we\u2019re going to be the best of friends!\u201d
\nSo we brought Tommy the Turtle home and I the next day I went down to the local pet store. With my allowance, and a lot of help from my parents, I bought the turtle a home and some turtle food.
\nAnd it was not just any home\u2026
\nI got him the biggest plastic turtle estate they had, with high plastic sides so he couldn\u2019t get out, a nice, spacious lagoon for him to swim in, and a tropical island with a lovely, slender, plastic palm tree right there in the middle of it all.
\nThe salesman said, \u201cAnything else, young man?\u201d
\nI answered, \u201cYes sir, give me the finest dead houseflies you have\u2026 Spare no expense. Nothing is too good for my new pet turtle.\u201d
\nI brought the home home to my home, filled the pond with crystal clean water, and lovingly placed the little turtle inside.
\n\u201cThere you go, little fella. It\u2019s your new home!
\n\u201cLook at all the cool stuff I got for you\u2026 there\u2019s a nice pond for you to go swimming in, and a nice little island where you can rest, and a nice palm tree for shade, and alllllll the dead flies you can eat! You\u2019ve got it made now, my small friend!\u201d
\nWell, my interest in the turtle lasted about an hour\u2026 hour and a half at most.
\nI sat there and watched the turtle do basically nothing whatsoever for a really long time.
\nI tried to feed him a fly, but I guess he wasn\u2019t hungry.
\nI waited for my pet turtle to do something\u2026 anything!… and nothing happened.
\nHe just lied there.
\nDoing nothing at all.
\nI was bored stiff.
\nAnd I was done with the turtle.
\nFrom that day on, I paid less and less attention to the poor little reptile.
\nDays became weeks, weeks became months.
\nI was always busy\u2026 running off to a Little League game, doing my homework, doing my chores, playing with my friends, watching TV, drawing stuff\u2026 and never had time anymore for my little pet turtle.
\nI neglected the poor thing.
\nI\u2019d throw some dead bugs in there from time to time\u2026 usually right after my mother yelled, \u201cPaul! When was the last time you fed that damn turtle?\u201d
\nBut I rarely cleaned the house and his habitat started to get really gross and smelled absolutely disgusting.
\nI hardly ever changed the stagnant water and the pond was getting overgrown with some kind of moss and\/or slimy green scum that was working its way onto the island and creeping up the walls.
\nEven the animal\u2019s shell had developed a fuzzy fur coat of green velvet.
\nUltimately, after a lengthy period of neglect and apathy, my pet turtle\u2019s tropical island paradise looked a lot more like swampland in downtown Detroit\u2026
\nOne of my model cars was on fire and propped up on little cinder blocks in the corner, with its scale-model tires lying at the bottom of my turtle\u2019s fetid lagoon.
\nThe shopping cart from my sister\u2019s Barbie collection was lying on its side next to them.
\nI\u2019m ashamed to say that the Board of Health would have condemned this repulsive dump and it stayed in that condition for quite some time.
\nThen, one day when I came home from school, my mother called me into the room where my turtle was kept and said, \u201cPaul, where\u2019s your turtle?\u201d
\nI said, \u201cHe\u2019s in his thing\u2026 where else would he be?\u201d
\nMy mother said, \u201cHe\u2019s not in there.\u201d
\nI said, \u201cOf course he\u2019s in there, mom. He can\u2019t get out.\u201d
\nBut I was wrong\u2026 The turtle had gone AWOL and was nowhere to be found.
\nThe guy at the pet store guaranteed that this habitat was positively escape proof.
\nHow in the world did he ever break out?
\nIt was utterly impossible for a turtle to climb up the high, sheer, plastic walls\u2026 especially after they were all overgrown with that slippery, mutant, bright green fungus that had taken over the pen.
\nSo what happened?
\nLong before anyone heard of C.S.I. or forensic science, my family put our heads together and tried to figure out how the turtle escaped by a process of elimination and deductive reasoning.
\nIn the end, we agreed that the only possible solution to the puzzle of the disappearing turtle\u2026 as crazy as this may sound\u2026 was, after living for months in the squalor of that revolting habitat, the poor turtle was so desperate to get out, he had somehow managed to pull back the long, thin, plastic palm tree, held on for dear life, and used the bent palm tree to catapult himself out of the tank like an Olympic pole-vaulter.
\nThere was simply no other possible explanation.
\nThe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have been content to live in the sewer system underneath the street of New York City but not this turtle. He was apparently so fed-up with the stinky septic tank that his home had become, he succeeded in pulling-off a move that Jackie Chan would have been proud of\u2026 and escaped captivity.
\nNow that this mystery was solved, we proceeded to tackle the next burning question which was, \u201cWhere the hell did the turtle go after he got out?\u201d
\nHe had to be somewhere in the house\u2026 but no.
\nWe looked everywhere\u2026 no turtle.
\nWe searched every corner of every room, nothing\u2026 Not a trace.
\nUnder every piece of furniture; under every bed; every couch; every chair\u2026 Nothing.
\nIn every crack; in every crevice; in every nook; in every cranny\u2026 No luck.
\nThe turtle had vanished\u2026 into thin air.
\nHow could that be? How far could a tiny, little turtle go on his tiny, little turtle legs?
\nHe couldn\u2019t reach the doorknobs!
\nAfter searching the house in vain for a good part of the day, we finally had to give up and, as the days passed, we eventually forgot all about the baffling riddle of the runaway turtle.
\nOne Sunday afternoon, three or four months later, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad.
\nI was busy making a model airplane while my dad was reading the Sunday paper.
\nMy mother was cleaning in the living room and mopping dust-balls from underneath the radiator.
\nFrom out of nowhere we heard a horrifying scream\u2026
\n\u201cAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!\u201d
\nMy dad and I looked at each other and, at the exact same time, said\u2026
\n\u201cMa found the turtle.\u201d
\n\u201cMa found the turtle.\u201d
\nApparently there was one dust-bunny that had four little legs sticking out of it.
\nNeedless to say, I never got the puppy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My First Pet\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p614ww-ex","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}