I used to be a regular at the pet store on the second floor of my local mall, down by Sears. Whenever I had to go with my mom to run errands, at the end of our quest, I would drag her to the pet shop. I gaped at the squirmy puppies – all cartilage – and kittens no more than eyes and fluff, along with the usual sickly goldfish and colorful, preachy birds. What got me though was that they had tortoises. In a hexagon plexiglass-walled pen in the middle of the store, filled with sawdust chips and a miniature wooden house, a dozen desert tortoises casually plodded, frequently pushing into each other, like bumper cars toward the end of the ride when the mechanisms wind down. Their earthy brown-and-gold shells made them seem like boulders that had come to life, rolling about at their own will. I admired the methodical and slow yet determined pace that they kept, much like senior citizens who walked laps between Lord & Taylor and the food court.
After months of convincing, bartering, and saving up my allowance, I assembled the 60 dollars – a truly extraordinary sum for a sixth grader – to purchase one of these tortoises. He came home in a cardboard carrier, bumping and thumping the whole car ride. At home, in his glass aquarium, I would sit so close to the heat lamp that it threatened to burn my skin, as I stared with fascination at his beaky face, beady black eyes, and wrinkled mouth and neck. He reminded me of a late-in-life Clint Eastwood. He clunked all over his enclosure, brazen, bold and rarely tucked into his hinged, brown and yellow shell. Even when sleeping, often his arms and legs would sprawl out. This was a turtle without fear.
At this time, I was obsessed with a book called 1,001 Names for a Baby. I was fascinated by the full page of nicknames for Elizabeth (Liz and Beth, sure, but Betty or Becky?), and used this brick of a paperback to find unusual names for all of my stuffed animals and pets. I started with the As in the boy-name section to find one appropriate for my new tortoise. I didn’t get very far though. As soon as I saw that Aristotle was the name of some ancient philosopher, and as no one seemed more stoic, thoughtful, or philosophic than this desert tortoise, it was over. I threw in Aaron for a middle name for a nice alliteration, and he was christened.
Perhaps Plato would have been a better-suited name for my tortoise, because Aristotle was not content confined to the cave. He wanted to leave and experience the light of the world for himself. Staying true to his disgruntled disposition of an old man, Aristotle wasn’t satisfied by his surroundings. Every day he spent hours and hours every day, clawing at one corner of the aquarium. His head pressed against the seam of the two perpendicular glass panels, his front legs and sides of his shell smashing into the sides. He seemed to think that if he slammed hard enough, one day that glass corner would give out and he would be free. He also might not have been too bright, but I refused to think less of my new tortoise. He was probably deranged.
As the New England slush and mud subsided, and the outdoors began to resemble Aristotle’s native desert climate, I started to take him out for walks. Our house in the Massachusetts suburbs had a fenced-in backyard, and I would spend hours on the porch reading Roald Dahl (clearly Esio-Trot – his short book about a man in love with a woman in love with her pet tortoise – was my favorite), letting Aristotle roam free, getting up every twenty minutes or so when he got a little too far away for my liking. I would pick him up and bring him back to the stairs where he would start on his journey again: jetting through the grass in spurts, pausing for a rest, slowly pushing his way through dead leaves and stems, determined. It wasn’t hard to keep him in line though: as much ground as a tortoise can cover, a human is usually faster.
In the summer, my family rented a house on a small island in Long Island Sound, so we loaded Aristotle’s aquarium into the back of my mom’s station wagon and endure two hours of clunking. My mom seemed on the verge of a breakdown by the time we arrived at the ferry dock. Once on the island, though, Aristotle was in tortoise heaven. No fence at our house that summer, but a huge grassy sprawl that had never been manicured. The lawn was a dry, yellowy green and brown, with patches of dusty, sandy dirt between half-exposed rocks. With all of that, plus the intense July sunshine, Aristotle must have felt that he was back in his desert home. I would spend hours reading on the porch – this time Sharon Creech or Lois Lowry or Gary Paulsen – continuing my routine of getting up every twenty minutes or so and bringing him back to the starting point. He was like a mechanical toy in trajectory and pace. He certainly was not fast, but he could get away from you.
Besides reading books on the porch, reading books on the beach, and sitting outside with Aristotle, there was not much to do on the island, so I started to hang around the tiny local library volunteering to shelve books and helping older women check their email. I was never paid, but somehow I never had any late fees and won first place in the July Creative Writing Contest.
It was on one of these days, when I was at the library, that my dad got frustrated with Aristotle’s relentless crashing into the corner of the glass aquarium. My dad ran his own company, advising investors, and, that summer, he could work remotely from the island, frequently conducting conference calls in no shirt and a bathing suit still damp from a morning swim at the beach. On that particular day, my mom was off in the town center with a few family friends who were visiting us, and it was unclear when I would be back from the library. So, my dad took Aristotle outside with The New York Times, and sat and read and had another cup of coffee. Aristotle strolled through the dried grass, making great strides until my dad would get up and bring him back. But then the phone rang inside. My dad got up to answer what turned out to be an important call, and talking business and meetings, he became distracted, and forty minutes later when he came back outside, Aristotle was nowhere to be found.
When I came back from the library, I knew instinctively that something was wrong, similar to returning home and seeing an ambulance or a police car, red-and-blues flashing, parked outside. My mom, dad, and our family friends were circling the house, all three kids from next door, their parents, and the entire family from across the street were all outside, some on hands and knees. Two boys were crawling under our porch when I figured out what happened.
“Where. Is. Aristotle.”
I didn’t even let my father explain before I screamed. I ran to my room, shrieking, hyperventilating, letting all of my thirteen-year-old hormonal emotions flow free and violent. My skin was red and dry from the salty water streaming down my face. I had trouble breathing evenly. I refused to speak to my dad when he came upstairs to apologize. The tantrum lasted through dinner, through a homemade card made by the daughter of our family friends (Were [sic] sorry with a drawing of a turtle, signed by my parents, my brother, our family friends, and both of our dogs), through several days, when it became clear that Aristotle was gone and not coming back:
My grandmother called me on the phone to comfort me:
“Oh, Elizabethy. Animals shouldn’t be kept in cages. Think of how happy Aristotle is now. He’s probably swimming with his other turtle friends in the ocean as we speak!”
“Nunni,” I said darkly, my voice thick with teenage anger and angst, “he’s a desert tortoise. If he’s in the ocean, he’s dead.”
***
I used Aristotle’s loss as leverage for years: “Oh, I can’t stay out past 11?” I would say as a teenager, “You know who’s always out past 11 now? Aristotle.” I especially liked to guilt trip my dad. Almost a decade and a half later, I emailed him a news story. A family in Brazil lost track of their red-footed tortoise named Manuela in 1982. They searched to no avail, and eventually gave up, assuming that Manuela had run off after some maintenance workers had left the door to the house open. Thirty years later, cleaning out the house after the father of the family had died, the grown children opened a box they found in a locked storage closet. Inside the box, they discovered an old record player and a red-footed tortoise.
Manuela had survived three decades on termites alone.
There’s hope yet.
Tags: animals, childhood, dead pet chronicles, death, e.b. bartels, loss, the finality of death, the incompetence of adults, turtles
Ah, the prolonged guilt-tripping of parents for the minor crimes they committed.
We never lost a pet (though one day our terrifying cat Olive pretended to a lady that she had hit Olive with her car, and for three days we thought Olive was dead before she came sauntering back with a few burrs in her fur but otherwise fine) but when I was small I slipped down the stairs. I was certain I broke my toe, my mum was equally certain I hadn’t. She continued being certain til the next morning when it had swollen and gone black, was certain on the phone to the doctor, continued being certain on the way to the hospital, was very loudly certain when they put me in a wheelchair to transport me around, and continued being certain until the very second my X-Ray came back.
I had, indeed, broken it. In an awkward place that meant a cast for 8 weeks.
I have never let her forget this. Throughout childhood every time she disbelieved me about my health I just said ‘foot’. To this day I use it, and it’s been 20 years since it happened.
My kid sister insisted she had a bone in her throat from fish sticks when I was a young teen. My Dad and I didn’t believe her, because A) pre-packaged fish sticks with bones? and B) true to the rest of our family, she worried about weird stuff for no reason. She wouldn’t stop whining for like the whole night, so finally in late evening we all went to the hospital – where a doctor pulled a one inch fish bone out of her throat.
The worst part is that when she developed a fixation on people having bones in their throats (she stayed up all night waiting to hear me choke once after I remarked that my throat was sore), we couldn’t say anything. We were those people who could have killed her with our bone-in-throat denials.
she stayed up all night waiting to hear me choke
Did you intend for that to come across as terrifying as it did?
When I had just turned 3, my dad decided I was ready to sleep in a side-less bed, and, while I appreciate the fact that he thought enough of me to come to this conclusion, it took about 2 hours of side-less sleep for me to fall out and break my collarbone. I will never let him live this down. (My favorite part is that, almost 27 years later, I still vividly remember my mom -in an attempt to find out what was wrong- moving my arms around and frantically saying “does this hurt?! does this hurt!??!”) Ah, to be the oldest (practice) child. I call this story, “Baby’s First ER Visit”, and I think I’m still the only one in the family who finds that funny.
On vacation in the cape, my parents bought my brothers and I fun colorful rain boots (the summer vacation where it rained so much our rental house flooded…I recall it as fun.). My brother complained incessantly that the boots were hurting him. My mom was so frustrated. “They measured your feet! You tried these exact boots on at the store! You are the same size as your brother! Please stop complaining!”
Two days later she finally stuck her hand in the boots, and pulled out the crumpled up paper they put in each toe.
God was he so crabby while his little feet were being crushed.
My parents gave me aspirin when I had the chicken pox. I developed Reye Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reye_syndrome). You better believe I’m never letting them live that one down. (“Remember that time you almost killed me?”)
My mom was so excited to take us on our first trip to New York city, when my sister and I were 14. However, the first evening, I developed soreness in my right knee, which, the next day, turned into a limp. That night it turned red, and by the following morning, it was throbbing and hot, and there were red streaks running down my leg. An ardent lover of New York dedicated to making sure her daughters loved it too, Mom was not going to let this hamper our trip. She put a bottle of peroxide in my purse and we swabbed my knee every few hours in various public restrooms all over Manhattan. When we got home, Dad took one look and called the doctor, and drove me to his house on a Sunday. I had a staph infection. Mom is horrified that she let this happen, but perhaps equally horrified that Dad was the one who freaked out about it. I try to be judicious about it, but everyone once in a while she gets a “Well, yeah, but let’s remember staph infection, shall we?”
Wait, how was peroxide supposed to help with a clearly internal problem?
Well, in her defense, I got the infection through a small cut on my knee, and she didn’t recognize what it was. But you are 100% correct that this is NOT how to treat a staph infection.
When I was 4, my sisters and I were hanging out around our car while the parents were packing the house for moving. I was inside the car, leaning against one of the doors. My sister was on the outside and opened up the same door, I fell out and broke my collarbone. The parents finished packing, loaded us on the plane from Louisiana to Utah, and it wasn’t until the next day they decided to take me to the doctor to figure out why I was crying. 32 years later, I still occasionally bring it up to guilt both parents and sister.
I have a similar story, although I lucked out and happened to break my arm on a day when my little brother already had a doctor’s appointment for strep throat. My mom only took me along to the appointment because she was tired of listening to me cry about having fallen off the monkey bars, and she thought letting the doctor look at my arm would appease my little worrywart self. She was properly horrified when the doctor told her that little bro was fine, but I had a broken arm. (Bright side: as an apology gift, she got me my first troll doll, and I got a neon pink cast to match the troll’s neon pink hair. Height of six-year-old summer fashion.)
And then a few weeks later my dad accidentally tipped us out of our red wagon, and the broken bones got misaligned and I had to have surgery to get them fixed. There was no bright side to this; the hospital was out of neon casts, so I had to get a white one, and they gave me butterscotch pudding right after I woke up from the anesthesia, and butterscotch has made me nauseous ever since. (Apparently a side effect of anesthesia sometimes.)
I should probably give both my parents much more crap about this than I do.
Most of the time in my family we just blame the victim. “Remember that time in preschool when you fell and split your ear open and got stitches? How did you manage to get hurt so often?” “I don’t KNOW, Mom, I was 3.”
But every now and then my mother suffers from these weird guilt fits. Like, she has no problem with breaking my heart when I came out as bisexual, for instance, but I’ll get these random emails: “Was I a bad mother because I worked a lot when you were kids?” “Um, no, Mom, we had to eat after all.”
Moms!
I, too, had a turtle that ran away. Turtley (we weren’t very creative) was a box turtle and my dad built it an inadequate outdoor cage. We lived in a house with train tracks in the backyard so I imagine she’s still out there, riding the rails.
One of my friends also had a pet turtle that ran away, so apparently this is way more common that I could have imagined.
I (briefly) had a box turtle named Boxy, so… I feel you on the creative name issue.
I love both those names intensely.
I choose to believe.
Aristotle isn’t dead. He is kicking up sand-dirt with his little toes and eating bugs, laughing at the dumb humans who had to leave paradise.
I am sure this is beautiful and all but I am definitely not reading it because I cannot handle dead pets.
he’s not necessarily dead!!
I can feel Aristotle’s happiness at being let loose in the grass.
My grandmother, who lives in New Jersey, had a lovely feral turtle that would show up in her yard for a few days at a time every week. He only stopped coming around about five years ago. Perhaps Aristotle made it that far, and he and my grandmother became good friends!
“feral turtle”
EB BARTELS. LADIES/GENTS—keep an eye on this lady, she’s wicked smart and totally going places.
And I say this both because I enjoy her writing and also because she’s a cool person. SO GLAD to see her writing pop up on The Toast!
you’re the best, caroline!
THIS KEEPS HAPPENING
HEY EB WE WENT TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TOGETHER
Sorry, people I know keep publishing things here, it’s getting a little nuts. In other news, my parents lost my hamster once; I got him back, but I know a little of your pain.
HEY MIRANDA! of course! we went to elementary school together! my mom saw your dad the other day!
I’m glad your hamster was found. I wish all lost pet stories could have such happy endings.
I am on the other side of the story. I always wanted a pet tortoise while growing up but in Chile they’re prohibited, so to not promote pet trafficking (which is the cruelest thing in the world) my mother never got me one. Years later, one appeared (ok, walked) in front of my next door neighbor porch out of nowhere. For the next three years I tortured myself over the fact that if the turtle had walk three meters more it would have been mine, also doing lobby with the mother of my neighbor because he didn’t take proper care of the poor turtle (left outside while it was raining in the winter, not given him food, etc). One day, she was fed up with her son, so as a revenge, she gave it me. My tortoise (Señora Tortuga) has been roaming free around my house and backyard for 4 years now, and I think we are both very happy. Now I kind of feel bad for the family who lost the turtle in the first place, it may have been a situation similar to yours (I never tried to give it back, because I thought that if they did lost the tortoise, they didn’t deserve the tortoise, After reading this I’m reconsidering it).
Aristotle, no!! I had a similar story, though the culprits were my younger brother and his friend. They left the front door open while playing, and my cockatiel flew out – its wings hadn’t been clipped in some time because my dad had hit a blood vessel during the last clipping and gotten spooked about doing it again. We could see the stupid bird perched in the trees behind our house, but it wouldn’t fly back.
I like to think it became King of the Crows and lived out a long and happy life of petty tyranny.
When I was maybe six, someone stole my red-eared slider turtle (it was very wee but was intermittently unsupervised that day in a large wading pool on the back deck). My parents totally knew who did it, but their parents didn’t take it seriously enough to shake the kid down, so Julia lived the rest of her life a dozen houses farther down the street than originally intended. I hope she didn’t just starve to death etc.
Definitely the worst pet-related thing that ever happened to me (it’s pretty sad/horrible, move right along to the next comment if you like): in the same house/around the same time as the purloined turtle, we had a pair of cockatiels. The male cockatiel was super tame and pretty much my best friend. We lived in a small town and people didn’t really lock their doors. My dirtbag father was widely suspected of having stolen a keg from the county fair. As far as I know, he didn’t, but he was definitely a logical suspect. Anyway, someone’s idea of a “warning shot” on the issue was to break into our house when we weren’t there (“break into”), kill said cockatiel, obviously by crushing its neck, and then leave the dead body in the cage, with the door open and its terrified mate cowering in the corner. (She died within the month.) I remember crying in an empty bathtub for what felt like hours.
WTF. That is absolutely horrible. My solidarity to you in cockatiel loss, and I hope the person who killed that innocent bird developed creeping gangrene in all of his limbs.
I bet whoever killed that bird did much worse stuff in their lives, some of which was likely eventually punished by either criminal or street justice.
I had a great-uncle who was involved with the mob in the 60s, and this definitely happened to his daughter’s cockatiel when they were out for the day. Poor birds.
This is horrifying but also strangely comforting??? Like, “oh, it’s not that personal, it’s an established intimidation tactic!”
In dead pets by neighbors’ hands, my little brother had gotten 2 golden labs when they were puppies (named Todd and Copper from Fox and the Hound). About a year later, brother was out for a walk with one of them; it was a rural neighborhood and no one kept their animals leashed. The dog got in a fight with one of the neighbor’s dogs. The owner of the other dog went and got his gun, and shot my brother’s dog. He claimed he was trying to fire a warning shot, yet obviously wasn’t firing in the air or off to the side. My brother was absolutely devastated.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when we eventually moved, we couldn’t take the other dog with us and gave to another neighbor. About six months later we heard that the dog had been suspected of killing a sheep, and so was also shot. It was about 15 years before my brother could bear to get another dog.
Oh wow, your poor brother!!! On both counts, but I can’t imagine watching my dog get shot and killed.
When he was growing up on a farm, my dad had a dog that was also suspected of killing a sheep on a neighboring farm. His dad made him shoot it. Later, it became clear that the actual culprit was someone else’s dog. I’m beginning to feel people have kind of a lax but violent attitude about sheep security.
They do. They do.
Why do we let men do anything??? I’m sexist but you know I’m right.
I got a red-eared slider in kindergarten after watching a documentary about turtles on Channel 11 and (inexplicably) thinking they were the coolest creatures ever
I am 34 now. The turtle lives with my mother. She claims he will dance on all our graves. I fear she is right. What have we done.
“You know who’s always out past 11 now? Aristotle.” yessssssssss
OH! OH! My friend in junior high had a turtle that disappeared during his afternoon constitutional in the backyard. It was fenced everywhere so they assumed he’d been grabbed by a hawk. About four months later, they were in the yard, enjoying the spring sunshine, and the missing turtle does some zombie bullshit and climbs out of a mud puddle like nothing happened. Turns out certain species bury themselves in the mud over winter.
I know that doesn’t help with your missing tortoise though 🙁 (it’s a DESERT tortoise)
Aww, this made me want to go home and hug my pet tortoise! Norbert is a Russian tortoise who also yearns for freedom, which he gets tastes of when I let him wander around my apartment, terrorizing my cats.
This also reminded me of the time my dad released my pet iguana, Iggy, in the woods because he was afraid my then-pregnant mother would contract salmonella from him. He told me that Iggy would be happier in the wild, but even at age 6 I knew that an iguana was not going to last long in the woods in Maryland…
WTF, your dad?
To be fair, according to the CDC website, up to 90% of pet reptiles are carriers of salmonella, so his fear wasn’t unfounded. And I do have a vague recollection of my day unsuccessfully trying to find a new home for Iggy before releasing him (not sure how hard he tried…)
He later tried to let my sister’s pet rabbit go in the woods because my sister neglected it to the point where my dad became entirely responsible for its care, but it didn’t work that time- the rabbit knew what was good for it and came right back to our porch.
My stepmom eventually took my bearded dragons to a reptile sanctuary, where the man called them “darling”, and they were probably very happy.
Lucky bearded dragons!
requesting more stories of norbert’s reign of terror please
It’s so funny, he’s fascinated by the cats and they are scared of him, so whenever I let him out he chases after them until they jump up somewhere from which they can observe him in safety. Why, I don’t know- he’s about 5 inches across and moves pretty slowly and I cannot think of a way he could possibly harm them. It’s especially puzzling when it comes to my older cat, who will happily wrestle with my dog but will only come close to Norbert when he’s safely esconced in his tank.
I wonder if he’s sad about it 🙁
I wonder that too!
I had a russian tortoise named Harold when I was younger! We built a really cool outdoor enclosure for him in the garden and he would always escape by digging under the fence. We buried bricks but he would still get out somehow! One time we thought he was gone for good but we found him by the garbage cans across the yard. I think he also tried to climb the chicken wire fence but this might be my childhood brain making things up. Another time we used our dog Princess (older chihuaha, definitely not hunting dog) in a desperate attempt to sniff him out and SHE FOUND HIM. On the other side of the fence in our neighbors yard! Unfortunately one day he disappeared and we never found him. <3 Harold.
Aww, Harold! Everyone has such great names for their tortoises.
When I was 13 I want to England for a month with my best friend and her family, leaving my father in charge of my terrarium and its occupants – 2 anole lizards and a tree front. The female anole promptly died (I assume of a broken heart). When my dad told me on the phone he also proudly told me that he had put her in the freezer so I could dissect her when I got home.
So now you know more about my dad’s emotional acuity.
Did you dissect her when you got home?
Haha no, but actually mostly just to punish my dad for being so dense and not because I was actually that emotionally attached to her.
I have a horror of doing what your dad did. Well, not that specifically, but god, that feeling of accidentally letting someone down in such a major way is awful. I’m having trouble breathing just thinking about it.
My brother had a pet newt once, whose name I’ve forgotten. The newt liked to hide under the clay volcano Chris had made to cover the tube for the water filter and dart out to eat the small fish in the aquarium. One day, the newt was nowhere to be found, and my brother was pretty sure the newt had crawled out and died in a corner somewhere. Two months (!) later, I was visiting, and nearly had a heart attack when, early in the morning, something small, wriggly, and covered in dust shot across the kitchen floor by my foot. We’re pretty sure it was crawling back into the tank at night, and just hiding itself in a corner of the house during the day, but it may have had actual supernatural powers, which it probably developed while living under a volcano and devouring fish.
Dying of laughter thinking of “living under a volcano” as some kind of prerequisite for supernatural abilities – better or worse than getting bitten by a radioactive spider? I suppose it depends on what the weather’s like, and, you know, if the volcano is active or not.
Have been so wrapped up in my own and other people’s dead pet tales that I forgot to mention I enjoyed this a lot and thought it was very well-written.
I definitely like to believe that Albert (my pet parakeet, named after my dad’s boss who I thought he resembled) is still flying around out there somewhere. It’s not out of the question, it almost never gets too cold for them and there are parrots in my mom’s neighborhood so maybe…?
Oh yeah, I believe my lovebird Gus found another family to terrorize/love and did NOT get eaten by a cat.
My roommate junior year of college procured a tortoise (illegally – you cannot purchase them in the state of New Jersey, but you can own them), named him Mordecai, and proceeded to keep him under her bed for the entire year for fear of the RA finding him much like he found my hamster. I would drag him out when she wasn’t in the room so he could get some sunlight and warmth.
He died of pneumonia that summer.
RIP Mordecai, you were the best little tortoise buddy ever 🙁 Should Aristotle not be roaming the wilds still, I hope the two of you are getting into tortoisey mischief somewhere.
Mordecai is an excellent name for a tortoise.
My roommate junior year of college procured a tortoise (illegally – you cannot purchase them in the state of New Jersey, but you can own them), named him Mordecai, and proceeded to keep him under her bed for the entire year for fear of the RA finding him much like he found my hamster. I would drag him out when she wasn't in the room so he could get some sunlight and warmth.
He died of pneumonia that summer.
RIP Mordecai, you were the best little tortoise buddy ever 🙁 Should Aristotle not be roaming the wilds still, I hope the two of you are getting into tortoisey mischief somewhere.
Also, wow, I seem to have by accident made another commenting account with the same user name. Today is not my technology day.
I lost my hermit crab, Lewis (named for C.S. Lewis – I was ten), by leaving him on my dresser while taking a shower. Eight years later, our dog deposited what was unmistakably Lewis’ shell on the front hall rug. I hope you had a fun run of the house before dying a natural hermit crab death, little buddy.
My best friend also lost her hamsters, Pebbles and Bam-Bam, in the couch. That story had a happy ending, though. Well — for the hamsters, not for the couch, which I believe her mother cut open with an x-acto knife in the rescue process.
I lost my hermit crab, Lewis (named for C.S. Lewis – I was ten), by leaving him on my dresser while taking a shower. Eight years later, our dog deposited what was unmistakably Lewis' shell on the front hall rug. I hope you had a fun run of the house before dying a natural hermit crab death, little buddy.
My best friend also lost her hamsters, Pebbles and Bam-Bam, in the couch. That story had a happy ending, though. Well — for the hamsters, not for the couch, which I believe her mother cut open with an x-acto knife in the rescue process.
I have a similar story, although I lucked out and happened to break my arm on a day when my little brother already had a doctor's appointment for strep throat. My mom only took me along to the appointment because she was tired of listening to me cry about having fallen off the monkey bars, and she thought letting the doctor look at my arm would appease my little worrywart self. She was properly horrified when the doctor told her that little bro was fine, but I had a broken arm. (Bright side: as an apology gift, she got me my first troll doll, and I got a neon pink cast to match the troll's neon pink hair. Height of six-year-old summer fashion.)
And then a few weeks later my dad accidentally tipped us out of our red wagon, and the broken bones got misaligned and I had to have surgery to get them fixed. There was no bright side to this; the hospital was out of neon casts, so I had to get a white one, and they gave me butterscotch pudding right after I woke up from the anesthesia, and butterscotch has made me nauseous ever since. (Apparently a side effect of anesthesia sometimes.)
I should probably give both my parents much more crap about this than I do.
I had a box turtle & gopher tortoise (can you tell I lived in FL?) as pets in the fenced in part of my backyard. My dad’s company was bought out and we had to move to IN, so I gave both to a family friend who already had like, three outdoor tortoises. The box turtle ended up digging her way out of their yard within a week. I was DEVASTATED, even though I knew she would be fine on the outside.