I Can't Forget That Kid Who Stole My Plastic Turtle

In which a dork learns a little about life during story time.

I was writing this column about my love for public libraries, when I suddenly remembered something. An ancient fire sparked in my chest, a righteous indignation from decades past. This memory stopped my writing cold. A deep and foreboding darkness hung over my desk. (That was pretty much just because my lamp burned out three weeks ago and I haven’t replaced the bulb—but still, it felt fitting.)

I deleted what I’d written. This was not a time for love anymore. No, now was the time to write a new column, another installment in my ongoing series, Archer Airs Out Ridiculous and Stupid Lingering Childhood Grievances for No Real Reason.

This is a story of pain and humiliation, of the ties that bind us and the times they are torn asunder—but in the end, I like to think it is a story of growth and determination and the human spirit that rises up in even the meekest of us.

This is the story of That Kid who stole my plastic turtle.

I was four years old, a carefree child much like any other—except shorter, more Italian, and prone to the occasional high-pitched rant about why The Magician’s Nephew is a cooler story than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In other words, I was a little dork.

My parents frequently took me to the public library for “story time,” when the librarians read to groups of about twenty kids. One late afternoon, my mom brought me to one such story time. In a meeting room, parents sat in the back, while the kids all criss-crossed on the floor. The far wall was decorated for the evening’s programming, the white board hung with paper trees and hills that hinted at the setting of the story to come.

You see, much of the story time fun came from the librarians’ vaudevillian dedication to entertainment. They weren’t just reading to us—they were putting on a show. Every story had props, skits, ways for us to become involved in the tale.

I took my seat on the floor along with my fellow children. At this point, I have to note that I wasn’t the most well-socialized four-year-old. Frankly, I was the Michael Jordan of awkwardness, naturally talented in a way few could ever hope to match. I was wildly intimidated by other kids, who were much larger than me and never seemed to appreciate my lengthy, sophisticated takes on C.S. Lewis. (Calling them “my fellow children,” probably didn’t help either.)

But at story time, that wasn’t the case. We all sat shoulder-to-shoulder, united by the librarian’s exciting performance. I wasn’t scared, and I was at least slightly less awkward.

Enter: That Kid.

I have no idea what his name was—in my mind it’s something like StickSack Ronko or Crispin Thaddeus IV. He was wiry, narrow-eyed, with the unsettling energy of a rich kid who’s been abusing stimulants. But most notably, he had a tail—a long, thin lock of loose brown hair that ran from the back of his otherwise close-cropped scalp down his neck to between his shoulder blades.

When he sat next to me, I thought nothing of it. He was a story time kid and I’d never had trouble with story time kids.

Story time began. This week’s tale followed a cast of animals, and the librarian, in suitably theatrical fashion, brought out plastic figurines for each of them—a rabbit, a bear, a bird, etc. As each character was introduced, she handed out the corresponding animal to a kid.

There were only about five or six figurines for twenty-some kids in the audience, so it seemed likely I would not be participating in today’s show. A disappointment, but one I understood—there were usually more kids in the audience than opportunities to join in.

Then the turtle, that beautiful turtle.

The librarian lifted that slow, shell-bound little fellow, and lo and behold, she pointed to me. I was to bear the turtle. She brought it over to me, and I took it gingerly in my hands, hoping she realized that I understood the responsibility with which I had been entrusted at this municipal library late afternoon community event.

To me, the plastic turtle felt giant and majestic—it fit across my entire lap. I ran my fingers across the grooved patterns of its shell.

“When your animal’s part of the story happens, stand up and bring it here,” she told us. “We’ll act out the story.”

I was nervous, but ready. When my time to stand arrived, you better bet I wasn’t about to let the librarian down.

Some pages followed with no turtle action, the boys and girls with the other animals taking center stage. I cradled the turtle on my lap, listening closely for his entry into the story. And then that moment of truth arrived.

The librarian turned the page and displayed the illustration of a turtle for us all to behold. I took a deep breath.

Then That Kid stole my turtle.

He snatched it right off my lap and walked to the front of the room. The librarian didn’t notice that it was a different kid, and no one else seemed to either. I hadn’t put up any resistance to the theft—it was so brazen and unexpected, that all I thought to do was let the turtle go.

That Kid stood up there with his tail floating on the breeze from the heating duct, showing off the turtle, my turtle, while the librarian read. (He was holding it all wrong, by the way—we couldn’t even see its face. No instincts for showmanship.)

In that moment, I wasn’t so much upset as I was baffled. How could he have just done that? Did he know you weren’t supposed to take things? There were rules here—this was story time, for goodness sake. I didn’t know what to do. The options for a four-year-old seemed quite limited. Start crying? Run away? Pee?

After the librarian finished reading, That Kid gave the turtle back to her and returned to the seat next to me.

“You took my turtle,” I whispered, more of a question than an accusation.

“Shut up,” he hissed back, with the menace of a future mob enforcer.

And, with all the courage of a water lily, I did exactly what he commanded. I sat quietly the rest of story time, picking at the skin under my nails, until That Kid’s mother took him away.

It was only as we were leaving that I really started to get angry, as I fully grasped how That Kid had taken the turtle, knowing the librarian gave it to me, brought it up there like it was his, told me to ‘shut up,’ and then got away with it. He had stolen and lied and—excuse me for my salty language at the time—been a complete fartface. In my first four blessedly sheltered years, I had never encountered such bold wrong-doing that went unnoticed and unpunished. But more personally, I had never felt so weak.

I told my mom what had happened. Upset on my behalf, she tried to explain how some kids did stuff like that and that it was wrong.

When I told my dad, he was equally sympathetic, but asked if I had done anything to stop That Kid. I could only shake my head. I had just let the turtle go. He told me simply, “You can’t let people do that to you.”

I thought a lot about those words, as I tried to push away my sense of humiliation—a word I didn’t know, but a feeling I was starting to understand.

A few weeks went by with no problems from That Kid. He missed some story times, and when he did attend, he was chosen by the librarians to participate and so had no reason to steal. Those were peaceful weeks, fun weeks even, but soon, at another story time, he sat right next to me again.

This time it was a fox.

It wasn’t a majestic plastic figurine like the turtle, but instead a construction paper animal, passed out by the librarian to this week’s chosen kids in the same fashion. I was chosen again, and That Kid was not. The librarian handed me the paper fox. When the fox entered the story, I was supposed to walk to the front and tape the paper cut-out onto a decorative board.

I knew what was going to happen. Blood rushed to my pale face, my heart beating in my ears, clammy sweat on my palms.

I looked to my left, and That Kid was already staring back at me through those narrow eyes. The way I remember it now, he didn’t look mean or intimidating—in fact, he looked bored. He was just going to take my fox because he wanted it and after the turtle, he knew that he could.

He grabbed the fox, but this time instead of letting go, I held on with both hands.

“You can’t let people do that to you,” my dad had said.

He pulled at the construction paper harder, but couldn’t rip it free. He pulled with his whole body, and I realized that he wasn’t strong enough to take the fox from me, and suddenly I was wildly, almost joyously, determined to never let go. I started pulling back.

The increasingly aggressive tug-of-war drew the attention of the other kids, and then the parents surroundings us. When they went to break it up, That Kid let go, and I rocked away, clutching my fox.

“He stole it from me,” he said, pointing at me.

Before I could protest my innocence, a bunch of the other kids jumped to my defense. “No, he didn’t.” “You were trying to take it.” “It was the weird kid’s fox.” My awkward little heart swelled like the Grinch’s on Christmas Eve.

That Kid’s mother swooped him away as he began to work himself into a tantrum. She rushed him out of the room, his tail bouncing between his shoulder blades, and I never saw him again.

In the struggle, the fox had ripped, but it was still intact enough for me to bring to the front of the room and tape to the board. I tried to play it cool, and only tripped twice on my way up there.

When we got home, my mom told my dad what had gone down at story time. He gave me some fruit snacks from the highest shelf I couldn’t reach and ruffled my hair. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Funny, when I started writing this, I was mad about the time That Kid stole my turtle, but now that I’ve told the full story, I’m not angry. I’m just glad I didn’t give up the fox. I don’t know what was going on in That Kid’s life, and I wish him the best wherever he might be now. And I hope that experience, however petty and small it was, helped me to never become the type of person who steals plastic turtles—but also not the type who lets them go.

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