Snails: A lifelong... parternship...

My mother got a bee in her bonnet when my twin sister and I were small and our skull sutures were not fused enough to make walking a good idea.  Oddly enough, this never seems to stop parents from wanting walking to occur as soon as possible.  This particular bee had to do with naming ‘something‘.  Apparently, Twin and I were naming things the actual name of the whatever species our toys happened to be.  Dog was dog, pony was pony, Australopithecus was Australopithecus.  It was a big problem. I have yet to figure out why; I assume because I haven’t spawned, but she treated naming things like the next step in using string theory to skate across the universe like gold medalist.

Of course, since I appear to have been perverse from a very early age, I was the first to comply to my mother’s demand that we begin to name things names, rather than categories.

One fine morning, I pranced up to my mother from our backyard in California and presented to her the finest of gifts.  A snail.  It oozed sweetly across the palm of my hand, silent and squishy, like an alien.  A delightful alien that carries its own home on its back and sings to the Little Mermaid when she needs convincing the sea, what with its fourth dimension of movement, is obviously the better place to live.

So, I showed her the snail as it goobered away across my small toddler hand.  I had her just where I wanted her.  That’s when I dropped the bomb:

Me: “Wanna know my snail’s name Mommy?”
Mom: “Yes!  What did you name it?!”
Me: “Elizabeth!” 

Then I squashed it.  I squeezed my sadistic and tiny fingers together until the snail literally oozed out of them.  Which is Disgusting and even now makes me want to cut my hands off and have new ones sewn on.  Bionic ones, like Luke Skywalker. 

To top it all off, I gave my mom a complex.  My younger sister’s middle name is Elizabeth.  I am sure my mother went straight into panic mode, since Twin and I refused to share with our new younger sister.  We only shared with each other, thank you.  Was this ‘Elizabeth the snail’ stunt a warning of my sibling rivalry?  A cry for attention?  A threat?  Was her 2 year old smart enough to put together such a creepy  metaphor for how she was feeling about having a new sibling?  (yes, but it wasn’t a metaphor)

In order to alleviate my mother’s concern I did what any two year old does; not alleviate.  I saw a reaction and began to do everything in my power to secure that reaction over and over again regardless of the emotions displayed in my mother‘s reaction.  For days I would go into the yard, re-discover Elizabeth, show my mom, who would have to be happy I named something, shmush the poor snail to death , throw its sad corpse away, and repeat.  My mother was horrified.  I am now, but I didn’t bat an eyelash back then.

I later redeemed myself (to snail-kind, not my mother) because, in keeping with my love of snails, I kept many of them in a terrarium as pets while I lived in Germany.  I fed them delicious vegetables and loved them with all my heart.  I sobbed when I had to let them go because some goober at the airport knew that somewhere down the road he could crush the heart of a small child by making her abandon her pet snails to the wilds of the Black Forest.  It was awful, I feel kind of weepy thinking about it now.