My mother gave me a present for my birthday while we were both at Darrouzett the other day for her party. She told me to wait til I got home to open it. Just as soon as I saw the size of the plastic bag that it was in, I started hoping that it was a certain item that I thought one of my brothers had stolen from me. It turns out that my mother had merely misplaced it, I guess. Or she may have forced my brother to give it back, I'm not exactly sure.
Anyway, I guessed correctly:
An 11 inch tall ceramic turtle made by Hazel Thompson of Rapid City SD, possibly 40-50 years ago.
This turtle is special because it involves a combination of a nightmare about driving a combine harvestor while I was around seventeen years old while listening to Elton John's 'Mad Man Across The Water' album on an eight-track tape player while wearing headphones.
I fell asleep in the dark listening to my new album with headphones on. In my dream I lose the headlights to my combine harvestor and the front part of the machine starts digging into the dirt of field. (In actual life I was just learning to use this piece of equipment.)
In the commotion of my dream I somehow ripped the headphone plug out of its jack, causing the audio to go out the regular speaker system.
My parents bedroom is just a few feet away.
My father wakes up to Elton John music blasting out the speakers and someone (me) cussing up a storm about his combine in the neXt room.
He goes in the hallway and switches on the light. What he sees next totally cracks him up laughing.
I am sitting on the floor with the headphones still on and talking (!!!) combine gibberish loudly AND the ceramic turtle is between my hands as a steering wheel.
I am not sure which song was playing.
I am glad my turtle is finally safely at my house. I noticed there is writing on the bottom of the turtle where my mother had stated that this turtle was given (?) to me in the year 1997 at Thanksgiving.
I just remember asking for it a few years ago.
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