I know what you're thinking—I'm going to tell you a love story.
I do love love stories: I love the old Jane Austen ones where the word 'dowry' is still seriously used. I love the shirtless Colin Firth modern adaptations of those stories. I love romantic comedies and I love couples on TV shows and yeah: I've read the Twilight series more than once. I even love asking couples how they found each other, just to see the weird places people can find their soulmate. I tend to love asking people about anything, though—I talk a lot.
There is love in this story. Love means the most. I wouldn't forget it.
But this is not a love story. It's more than that.
This is the story about how my sister Caitlin got me to stop watching TV.
It begins at love, though—my first love. Carl frenching Chiclet. Merci beaucoup.
I met Carl Chiclet—wait, hold on.
First, let's just analyze this name for a second here. I took literature courses. Names are very, very important in stories, and in this story that is not an exception. I mean, my name is Rachel Donatello. This should inform you that I am very beautiful, very just, and also a Ninja Turtle, possibly a princess.
So Carl Chiclet, first off—the alliteration? I'm sorry, I didn't know this was the Brothers Grimm. Give me a break, buddy. Second, Carl? I'm sorry, can you hear me or do you need to adjust your hearing aids first? C'mon.
And then there's the atrocity of the last name. Chiclet. Like those tiny pieces of gum! If you were to open a case in the movie theater and spill a couple, you'd be kinda like, "Eh, they're probably better off there." I'd say that's the case with Carl, but that sounds kind of rude, so I'll just say that he is a very special man. Huge heart. Elephant heart. No, literally the heart of an elephant—no, it's not. It's not. I'm sorry.
It's just frenching Chiclet. The man, the myth, the legend.
No, he's not related to the person that invented Chiclets. He was blessed with that name but without any sort of fame attached to it, other than having a good chance of being a puppeteer for Sesame Street one day. Carl Chiclet and the Chiclet clan, lifelong neighbors. They play wiffle ball with each other throughout the entire year. They send those Christmas cards where they're all wearing overalls and the caption is, "The holiday spirit is just in our genes!" And I feel so guilty for having shared that with you. I'm sorry, I really am.
But as I've said, Carl is a very special man. I met him first when I was three years old. My mom and his mom have always been really good friends, because, I don't know, they like to make loaves of things. Lemon loaves. Banana nut loaves. Zucchini loaves. And might I say, zucchini is not for loaves. It is for rabbits to nibble at in your garden. Zucchini loaves are the Chiclets of loaves.
Anyway, while my mom and his mom were off baking—well, they baked other things besides loaves, but for the sake of the story, yeah, sure, loaves—Carl and I fell in love at Scarlet Groves Elementary. (Why are the groves scarlet, you're probably wondering. Blood? And to that question, I respond: what the heck, man, can you please just stop being so fixated on this death thing?) We were in the same reading group. So…yeah, we read stories about lemonade stands and caterpillars.
When I say 'fell in love,' I should mention that a lot of the time our relationship really did consist of falling. Carl is very special and one of his specialties is being really good at the monkey bars. I of course was a genius, because I am a very qualified gymnast. I can do cartwheels to this day. We were both very good and agile but trial and error, you're bound to fall sometime. And we fell enough that I still have some scars on my kneecaps. Nobody can be perfect.
But Carl was a good friend. I liked him. My sister, Caitlin, is three years older than I am, which means that around this time she was getting into her 'grunge' phase and was really unpalatable. She kept riding horses like she was flippin' Paul Revere, though I can assure she is not as handsome as he. But she wore the goofy pants and watched every Disney Channel special about talking animals and I hated her a lot during those years, so I hung out with Carl. We liked to go feed ants with saltine cracker crumbs because my mom told me once that geese are full of disease and have teeth so ants seemed like the wiser choice.
What does falling in love with a boy with the worst name in the world feel like, you ask. Well, it feels pretty all right, especially when you're so young.
When Valentine's Day happened in our class we always made 'mailboxes' from old shoeboxes and decorated them depending on what we were interested in or from some theme or whatever. It was pretty serious shit. Very competitive. Our teacher that year, Miss Apple—and yeah, I know, gross last name, bear with me—well, she said that she didn't grade him. But what else were parents talking about at conferences? Spelling?
So we all tried really hard on it. One year I put bits of my hair on it. That haircut gave me years of shame, but it was a really cool mailbox so can I truly regret what I had done? And the year that I had Miss Apple and Carl and I had become really close, I decided that I wanted to design my mailbox like the Teenage Ninja Turtles.
Let me guess. Oh, this is a story about a tomboy. She has scars on her knees from rough housing with 'the boys.' She likes ham sandwiches. (I never mentioned this fact to you, but it's true. I really like deli meat. Ham first, then turkey, then roast beef. Oh, and meatballs. I love meatball subs. Tuna? Shoot me.) And now she likes Teenage Ninja Turtles. And let me guess, she's just the girl next door. I bet she has tears in her jeans and wears wifebeaters and says things like, "I'm just one of the guys."
Aren't you being awful presumptuous, but—well, I don't wear jeans anymore. I'm unemployed. I wear sweatpants, though I have a bunch of them in different colors so I wouldn't call it a fashion misstep as a deliberate fashion innovation. I also would never say "one of the guys," because that would imply I hang around a shit ton of guys, and the truth is that I don't, because I am not a dainty person.
However, I do love the Ninja Turtles. It all started because my last name is Donatello and, as you are familiar, the best Ninja Turtle is very obviously Donatello. Michelangelo is such a Caitlin and I tell Caitlin this all the time even still, because what screams 'try hard' more than the name Michelangelo?
I'm talking too much, aren't I? Editor's note: delete everything written so far.
To be more pointed: I made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mailbox. It had all four of the Turtles on them, because what is a Turtle without its other Turtles, but the place where you put the Valentine was Donatello's mouth. This took me about fifteen hours of my time, because it all had to be just right. My mom even bought me scrapbook paper and helped me with papier-mâché. My homework on the analog clock was unfortunately not very good that week.
I was so proud of it, and then I went to school and I walked into Miss Apple's and then I tripped. The entire thing broke, except for where Donatello's mouth was because obviously that was connected to the Nike box that I had used. And even though Donatello was my favorite, nobody wants to see Michelangelo the Papier-Mâché Turtle King meet his untimely death by his shell falling off, and also his face.
I started crying instantly.
Check up: how are you doing? Tears in your eyes? Yeah, I knew you had a soul.
The plight of the turtle. I still think about that frenching mailbox.
Because I dropped it, Carl came over to me and helped me pick up the pieces. "You've got snot on your face," he said to me. He was always such a romantic. At the time it made me smile. We put all the pieces into one pile. Miss Apple asked me if I wanted to go to the nurse because of the snot crisis, but I used my sleeve like a champ. By the time all the pieces were put in a pile, Carl had made me laugh six times. Almost all of the jokes were about snot. Carl was a man of many words even then.
I tried not to think about it, I really did. Miss Apple brought in her Valentine's Day box from last year in the event that something like this happened, but I was determined to keep using mine, because it had taken me so long to make. I felt like a wounded soldier in one of those movies with wounded soldiers in them. Ah, I've been to hell and back in the blink of an eye. That's all it took, the blink of an eye. (Editor's note: please read in a gravelly, man-of-steel tone.)
As I mentioned, though, the relationship of Carl and I involved a lot of falling, and that fall was probably the most important fall of all. My Valentine's Day box brought me so much sadness during school because I had to stare at it for the entire time.
But at the end of the day when I was waiting around for my mom to pick me up, I examined the contents within the box. Again, this was—in my youth—the biggest emotional feat of strength I had yet to face. I took a gulp; I readied myself. Okay, Rachel, I said to myself. Do it for Michelangelo.
So I did. I opened up every Valentine that I got, and it was as big a deal as you can imagine that something like that would be, which is not even a little bit. Stacey Hardwicke gave me some fruit snacks which I ate on sight. Patrick Li told me that I had a funky groove, whatever that means.
Call it fate, call it irony, but the last Valentine that I opened was Carl's. It was way at the bottom, like he had wanted to put it there first, before anyone else.
It wasn't one of those pack-of-18 that you buy at Walmart, either. It was a piece of paper that was—oh, is it too retroactive an observation to say shittily?—folded into four parts.
On the front was a picture of me. I was a stick figure with hay-like hair, which was actually a pretty accurate representation of what I looked like when I was in Miss Apple's class.
I opened the card up and there was a piece of my hair in it.
Here is where I take a pause for you to understand how absolutely creepy that is…
Pause… over. Because at the time I thought it was really sweet.
Dear Rachell, the letter read. (He wasn't a very good speller.) Sory for pulling your hair when we were playing tag. You told me you were making a turtle mailbox. My mom told me a story about turtles and hair. You have pretty hair. I put some in here cause I thought you might like it. Hapy Valentine's Day, Carl.
To me, this letter was the equivalent of Prince Charming putting the slipper on Cinderella's foot, because feet are disgusting and so is hair, a little bit. And Carl couldn't spell but I thought that meant he was this broken flawed soul who needed me to fix him.
He was waiting for his mom too, on the steps of the elementary school. Sometimes we carpooled, but on Tuesdays I had soccer. "Hey," I said to him whenever I got outside. "You should go inside. It's cold."
Carl smiled at me and he had just lost his one front tooth so it was endearingly crooked. "It's not that bad," he said. Bragged, if we're being honest here.
I sat down next to him. "I read your valentine," I said. "It was good."
"Yeah?" he said, and I nodded. "Huh."
"What?" I asked him. "I liked it. You said my hair was pretty."
"Your hair is pretty," he said.
We sat in silence for a brief second. "Can I kiss you?" he said to me. My hands were way sweatier than I wanted them to be and for a second I wondered if I should ask him if I could brush my teeth first because, if you remember the beginning of my story, I really like ham.
But I didn't say this, I just sort of nodded like an otter would, and he braced himself for a second and then kissed me, all cute-like, on the lips. My heart was out of control. My hands were super sweaty.
Even then I still picked up that his breath smelled like butter. It was weird.
So, to Carl and Caitlin. May you exchange many buttery kisses with each other for the rest of your lives, and, Carl, thank you for having enough taste and consistency to keep it within the family!
This was the first draft of my speech for Caitlin's wedding. I think it needs some editing, but I think I really dug into the heart and soul of the whole occasion, right?