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Once again, I’d like to have a crystal ball so I can see how you all answer this question! Will you be telling us a secret? Posting pictures? Sharing funny childhood stories? Or maybe something else entirely?
Here are three fun facts about me that I don’t think I’ve shared on my blog before:
1. I once stopped driving and pulled over to the side of a quiet, flat, country road to save a turtle that had been flipped over on its back. There were no other vehicles anywhere to be seen in either direction, so I was not putting myself in harm’s way by doing this. The turtle was a greenish-brown little creature that was about the size of a small dinner plate. It wasn’t at all heavy to pick up and probably weighed no more than 5 pounds. It didn’t look anything like a snapping turtle, but I’m not sure which type of turtle it was. I picked it up, brought it to the edge of the road, and made sure it was walking into the grass safely where it would live happily ever after before I drove off again.
2. I was born with an innocent heart murmur that wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult. It’s called an innocent murmur because it doesn’t cause any health problems and doesn’t need to be treated. Some of you may have one, too! About 10% of adults and 30% of kids have them, so it’s a pretty common variation of normal. I only ever think of it when I meet a new doctor who pauses and listens again to my heart while examining me.
3. I have always loved educational stuff. When I was a teenager, my family visited some family friends in a big city. There was a gorgeous, huge museum there I desperately wanted to see. Our hosts said museums were boring and wanted to show us a local mall instead. Mom took me aside and told me to be polite, so I smiled and said nothing more about it.
My only memory of that excursion is of patiently sitting in a food court with a neutral expression on my face as I silently felt the sting of disappointment and the grating texture of boredom that somehow seems worse when you’re a kid or teen.
On a positive note, I have visited that museum multiple times since then and always have a marvellous time examining their fossils, paintings, and artifacts in detail.
But I still don’t like going to the mall. Ha!
(This is in no way a judgement of people who love shopping or malls, by the way. May you enjoy those hobbies to your heart’s content. Our hosts and I simply had wildly different ideas about what is fun in life, and I doubt they realized what a rare treat visiting a museum was for rural people who didn’t have a lot of disposable income.
We had a mall in the town we lived in, but it was about a one-hour drive to the nearest small museum and several hours to a full day of driving for the large ones. Due to the cost of gas, multiple meals, parking fees, highway tolls, and possibly renting a motel room or two for the night in addition to buying general admission tickets to a museum, we were only able to afford to do this about once every five to ten years when I was growing up. It was a huge deal whenever it happened, and it was one of the many reasons why I moved to an urban area as an adult).
Not gonna lie, I love that you stopped to help the turtle, that’s just fantastic!
Aww, thanks. 🙂
I love a good museum, too, and I’d much rather visit one of those than a mall. Also, yay for helping the turtle! I wonder how often that happens. Though I should try not to wonder, else I’ll be awake all night thinking about it. 🤣
Thank you. I’d like to think most people would help in that situation!
You have a good heart. I enjoy museums too. Really like the Natural History museums here.
Thank you, Patrick.
If we’re ever in the same area, I’ll go to a museum with you. 🙂
That would be nice. Do let me know.
For sure!
Does the murmur do anything like arrhythmia? My mom, oldest sister, and I all have that. It gave one of the transplant places pause, but I got on the list anyway. Good on ya for the turtle rescue. I’m fond of turtles and frogs myself and try to get the turtles out of harms way.
I think so, yeah?
And thanks. Frogs are cool, too.
Fellow turtle rescuer! Solidarity. And I do love museums.
I remember, at one point when I was working at an eyewear store in the mall in Lawton, Oklahoma, watching a school bus pull up and disgorge a bunch of high-schoolers. They’d bussed them in from the local (rural-like-oh-my-GOD-there’s-nothing-out-there) towns to see what an actual mall looked like.
The local goths — all five of them — were absolutely secure in knowing that they were freaking out pretty much every adult in eyeshot.
That’s such a great story.
I also would rather go to a museum over a mall, although I don’t mind a mall sometimes.
Cool. 🙂
Omg, I relate about the mall vs museum thing! My hometown has plenty of malls and it’s a shopping haven, and if I was a tourist, I would totally visit my hometown to shop at the malls! But if I was visiting somewhere else that had malls not as big or cheap as my local ones, and with museums better than mine, why on earth would I visit the malls instead of the museums?!
Count me as another vote for the museum over the mall. My husband likes to tell me about the time he pulled over to help a hopelessly overwhelmed groundhog make its way to safety from the middle of the road. I can’t remember if he’s ever stopped for a turtle. The most I’ve done is to stop (safely, as you pointed out) and make noises to scare a fox kit away from the road’s edge and back toward its mom in the safety of the brush.
Unless there was a bookstore in that Mall I’d have been right there with you for the very same reason–THE MUSEUM is way better! Thanks for reading my TTT today!