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My buddy Fish had rolled into town one weeekend and was staying with a few of his people at the convention center, so I went to go meet him with a few of my people.
Shortly into our conversation, Fish and his people started making odd hand movements in unison. It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen coming from people who I was pretty sure weren’t on drugs.
“This – this is the awkward turtle,” Fish said with a look of satisfaction one could only get finding something worthwhile to believe in.
He placed his palm flat on the back of his other hand and wiggled his two thumbs – pardon me if I can’t draw a diagram.
“Oh, I see.” I said. The thumbs are awkward turtle legs, the two palms are the awkward bodies. But what does this mean?
“I was told about this awhile ago,” Fish explained. “Awkward stuff just seems to happen to us. So what we do when it happens is do the awkward turtle, so that at least we can all share in it.”
I was elated. For too long I had suffered through countless awkward moments, all alone in the world with no idea how to react.
Now I was being given an invitation to the awkward turtle club – maybe not the most prestigious club, but becoming a member felt right to me.
Right before I started attending Ohio State, I ended up at this suburban dinner party back home – 70’s furniture, appetizers, sycophantic laughs, sparkling white wine.
“Lots of students at Ohio State, eh?” said someone at the party, after I had been cornered into conversation.
“Well sure, but I imagine it’ll be just like high school with all the sects,” I said.
It took a long pause before I realized he thought I meant “sex.”
“No, no,” I sputtered, “I mean ‘sects.’ You know, in groups?”
With the realization that I had told this man that Buckeyes like sex in groups, and the awkwardness taking over the situation, I had to down my wine and make a bee-line for the door.
Save me, awkward turtle!
There was also the time when a kid who looked like Thurman Murman from “Bad Santa” asked me to buy him porn at a DVD store. He darted away from me before I had the chance to finish telling him “no,” but I had to feel bad for the poor fella – he could have used an awkward turtle in his life.
If I had known about awkward turtle during high school, it would have never left my side.
One time during freshman year of college, my suitemates were watching some “SportsCenter” in the living room. A nice distribution of people I guess: eight ignoramuses, ranging from a Republican former high-school wrestler on one side of the room to a liberal flower-waver on the other.
Maybe watching wrestling highlights prompted the wrestler to talk about wrestling for the millionth time that year. But I had heard it enough times for me to react, even though what he said wasn’t bad at all.
“Look, when it comes down to it, isn’t wrestling just foreplay?” I said, being the flower-waver.
It was one of things that just seemed to leak unwillingly from mind to mouth, when it should have remained just a passing thought.
And as the wrestler sat in his chair across the room, his teeth grinding themselves to dust, all I could do was sit on my side of the room covered in blush.
Although the wrestler surely wanted nothing more than to mount me and wrestle the life from my smart-alecky liberal head, all I wanted was someone in the room to flash me an awkward turtle gang sign to let me know everything was OK. I just didn’t know it then.
Awkward turtle can change the world, if it gets people like me to laugh at this stuff.
Graham Beckwith is The Lantern’s Arts & Life editor. He can be reached at [email protected].
