What is this world coming to?

Awkward turtle. Until a month ago, I had never in my life heard this phrase. Now I've heard it in three separate instances, and I want to cry.

Here's how I first heard about this unfortunate phenomenon:

About a month or so ago, give or take a few days, J and I were out to dinner, and we were talking. He was telling me about a conversation that had occurred in his office that day. I can't even tell you what the conversation was about because I was too traumatized by what happened during his retelling of it. J said that one of the two girls who worked in his office was feeling left out of the conversation that a bunch of the guys were having, so she put one hand on top of the other and started twirling her thumbs. It pretty much stopped the conversation and when someone asked her what she was doing, she said, "Awkward turtle." Apparently the purpose of this ridiculous maneuver is to get the conversation started again or moved in another direction. Yeah, right. Like that happens. It's a conversation stopper if I ever saw one. I told J that he should never do that again. Ever. In fact, he should tell that girl she should never do it, either. Ever.

Here, judge for yourself. For those of you lucky enough to have never seen this before, well, your luck just ran out. Press play on the video below. Come on. You know you want to. It's like driving by the scene of an accident: you don't want to look, but you are compelled to. Just don't say I didn't warn you.



Answer me this: is that as stupid as I think it is? Please, for the love of all that's good, I hope you agree that it's dumb. If I'm the only one who thinks that, I'm going to cry.

Anyway, I told you that I have been subjected to this horror three times now. I told you about the first time. The second time was almost more disturbing than the first. I was at my in-laws' house watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony with C and Mom H. I was recounting the story, and waiting for C to be horrified that her big brother had actually imitated such a ridiculous thing. I'm halfway through the story, and I put my hands on top of each other to demonstrate, and C goes, "Oh! Awkward turtle! I know that! People do it at school."

Oh. My. God.

Seriously? You mean more than one person knows about this? Why?

Well, I told C the same thing I told J, that she should never do it. Ever. Then I retreated into my safe place in my head, hummed a little song, and did my best to erase the experience from my memory.

Unfortunately it didn't work.

I thought I was pretty well over it, though, until yesterday. It was only the second day of school and things were going pretty well. I have two classes of seniors and three classes of freshmen. (I'm about to pick up another class of seniors next week. I'm crazy to give up my prep period for it, but it is a WASL writing class for seniors who need to pass the WASL or they won't graduate. I couldn't say no to that. Plus I've heard the money for working a 1.2 contract instead of a 1.0 contract is pretty good. But I digress. )

I was wandering the room during my fifth hour freshman class, listening to them talking as they were working on their brainstorming. Out of the corner of my eye, I see one kiddo in the back of the room, doing awkward turtle. It took all of my self-control not to kick him out of class right then and there.

Oh stop it. I'm just kidding.

Sort of.

I wanted to kick him out of class, but what I did was hang my head and walk away. I went back to my safe place again, but didn't hum any songs. I didn't want my kids to think I'm crazy on the second day of school.

There's plenty of time for them to figure that out.

As if awkward turtle was not enough, would you believe there is also "TMI Turkey"? You've got to be kidding me.




I think I'm going to go hide under a rock.