Crashing for Turtles

I was driving to Annual Conference the first weekend in June…in Traverse City…after class…in Fort Wayne.  It was a five-hour drive after a four-hour class after an hour-and-a-half drive.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I plugged in an audio book novelette (that I was bound and determined to finish before I arrived…I did) and began the northward journey. 

I was a little more than half way through and driving past Grand Rapids on 131.  Traffic was pretty busy, and, eager to be done with my drive, I weaved in and out of the lanes at 77 mph with the cars merging in and off the expressway.  Until, all of the sudden, the right lane was at a near standstill, hazard lights creating a parade. 

Cars flew by, passing the parade at an otherwise normal speed.  Already in the left lane, I was one of them.  I slowed and looked curiously towards the beginning of the line.  And then I saw the reason for the cautious traffic.  Looking to have made it across the merging lane and into right lane was a huge box turtle.

It took giant steps, racing across the traffic.  I was proud of its persistence but as it made it ever closer to the left lane of northbound traffic, I thought for sure it was toast.  I flew past but looked back several times in my review mirror.  A giant red semi barreled ahead.   I wanted to close my eyes but realizing I was looking in my review mirror, I simply focused on the road ahead, cheering on the turtle I was positive was about to reach its certain doom. 

I glanced back one last time as I merged to the right and saw it.  The semi saw the turtle, now just a dark speck in the dead middle of the lane.  The driver pulled so far to the left, the truck tilted in the ditch.  It’s tail and nose were in the lane, creating a semi-circle hedge of protection as the turtle continued in its unstopped mission to the grass and the truck made its way slowly back onto the road. 

I cheered!  Like literally clapped a couple of times.

And I texted a friend (through voice-to-text, calm yourselves) and told him, in very short version, about the miraculous turtle save and the semi who swerved off the road for it.  He responded shortly after with a message that read “good for the turtle! But be safe! Don’t go crashing for turtles!”

I decided, first, that “Crashing for Turtles” would be an EXCELLENT band name (if you are looking for a band name and use it, please give me at least a nod of credit or let me play kazoo in one song or something because you know it’s a sweet name!).  And then I was struck by the profundity of the phrase.

The idea of what it meant to crash for turtles and whether it was a good thing or bad thing, metaphorically, consumed me all through conference. And then for days.  Even weeks.  I declared it one of the most beautiful images of self-sacrifice I could possibly muster, and I dreamed of writing about it.  The latter might not seem like much but for someone who hasn’t wrote anything of greater worth than a research paper in months, the desire to write fanned the tiniest little spark inside of me. A spark that said maybe all of the pieces of me I thought I once knew weren’t gone…

Then life got in the way.  First it was school: Heady reading and several papers.  Then the end of my job where I was working way too many hours.  Then camp.  Then the start of another class.  Then just about the time I felt compelled to maybe, just maybe, finish my thoughts and what it meant to crash for a turtle in my twisted brain of metaphors and pictures and images…more life got in the way. When I opened the file on my computer marked “crashing for turtles” today – it was dated as “last edited by user on July 17”.  Significant because that was a day before the boy who, technically, coined the phrase (though my brain did all of the running away with it, so it was never really his or had anything to do with him), suddenly but quietly exited my life.  At almost the exact same time, I found out a dear friend was killed in a fatal car accident.  I lost all desire to talk about crashing for anything.  Let alone turtles. 

But more than two months later and the image hasn’t left.  If anything, it’s become richer and more meaningful and poignant.  And harder and more painful and more real… Because, you see, ultimately, the idea of crashing for turtles is about putting yourself on the line for something inferior. It either displays the ultimate heart of service or the reality of being made a slave and the distance between the two is striking. 

There is something incredible, for me, in the concept of the turtle as a person or mission or reality.  Someone not inferior in value or worth but in some other way. (*Insert the first disenfranchised, discriminated, unrecognized, or “forgotten” person or people group that comes to your mind here, for example*).  I love to the point of chills and tears what it means for the biggest and most powerful (of which all off us are in different places and spaces) to throw a piece of themselves off the proverbial road to protect the innocent, the vulnerable, the ones without the means to protect themselves (and yes this can be as simple as greeting the visitors sitting in the fifth row on the right at church even if you’re not really the outgoing type).  Creating that semi-circle of protection.  It's something I witnessed my friend Nick do often...and there were many previous "turtles" who attended his funeral to tell the tales...

And, though the semi put itself at risk, made the choice to protect, it was only part. Because what actually happened, as happened with the right lane of cars previous, is that it forced the cars behind it to stop and take notice. The turtle survived that day because if it was important enough for a big ol’ semi to throw itself off the road, then surely it was important enough for the sedan behind it to at least look towards what it was swerving around.  I was awed by the thought that I passed a mile of cars in the right lane (and merging lane) going nare 10mph with hazard lights on and those in the back would have NO IDEA the reason for the first and yet they too had trusted that the reduced speed and caution was important and necessary. 

I think this kind of crashing for turtles in underused and important and Biblical.  It seems like it is very much like the task of the Good Samaritan, the call of the Rich Young Ruler, and the drive of the early church (among many other things).  In our me-centric world of selfish gain and a gospel that fits my needs and wants and ministry in my comfort zones and is convenient for my schedule and matches my political leanings and my picture of the way the world should go…there is something unfortunately revolutionary and uncommonly heroic about the one who choose to lay aside her [comfortable, convenient, satisfying, desired, etc] life for her friends.  Let alone a vulnerable stranger.

And yet I’m torn. Not with that particular reality but because “crashing for turtles” is a metaphor with a double-edged sword. I’m torn because I realize that if something had happened with that giant red semi, if the itty-bitty little sedan behind it didn’t slow or stop or see, if traffic felt the need to dangerously merge at the wrong time, real people in real time could have been really hurt.  If that had happened, the headlines on the paper wouldn’t read “huge box turtle courageously saved by sacrificial truck driver”, it would have read something terrible like “Alcohol not in play in Thursday’s deadly accident”.  And no one would have easily forgiven the report of “Driver notes turtle cause of Thursday’s crash causing two deaths and seven injuries…”  Because the very real actual turtle was important and worthwhile. But not as valuable or worthwhile as that of a human life. 

And we all crash for these kinds of non-literal turtles.  We all have things in our lives that get valued above and beyond what is right and reasonable.  We have “turtles” which are given worth and importance and investment…turtles that, in seeking to save, we destroy parts of ourselves, parts of lives. I think about the long-toted idols of work and money and busyness and sex and drugs and stuff and gluttony. And the seventeen other deadly sins and whatever else it is that seems like something we are willing to stake our lives on, willing to crash for, things which seem like they are worth something and maybe some are in the short term but aren’t worth anything near a human life.  I think about the nights I didn’t sleep to finish the homework I was unwilling to settle for a “B” on.  I think about the jobs I went above and beyond simply to prove to someone else, somewhere else, that I had what it took.  I think about my sometimes consuming anxiety or my crippling thought obsessions. I think about the relationship with a boy who first caused me, quite unknowingly, to spiral from the phrase “crashing for turtles” at all.  The relationship being something I was willing to crash for but in the end being something which, when it crashed, how it crashed, deeply affected how I knew and understood “me” and what I had in value and worth.  I think about all of the friendships I’ve had which ended in one way or another.  Those too being something I would crash for and did crash for and yet caused the same and even worse crash of identity when it came to trying to decide why some people stay and some people go. 

I think about the ways that “self-care” is becoming a needed and important piece of mental health education…not because of the selfishness created in a me-centric reality but because in knowing and doing and moving and being (often out of an unhealthy core and unhealthy identity) people crash and burn in a way that seems to destroy them and takes others down with them and leaves them no good to themselves or anyone else.  And sometimes those are the same people who thought they were saving some turtle, when in fact nothing was saved and much was lost.

I’m stuck with these competing narratives, the ones warring against each other that demand an answer.  Any answer.  And the answer is important because it seems like the turtles I am willing to crash for or the ones I already do and have say a great deal about who I am and whose I am.  So I’m desperate to know and see and understand. I want the answer telling me how to move forward.  How to know which turtles to crash for and which to entrust.  Answers that say something like “this is how you know what turtles are worth it!” or “here is a definitive way to know whether or not this crash is Christlike or chaos inducing” or “when you encounter a turtle that you are unsure of, proceed with the following seven steps…”  But life isn’t like that, is it?  Life is full of questions and incomprehinsibles and unknowables and things most unfair. 

And so, despite the fact words have finally made it to page, I’m still caught in the tension.  I wish I weren’t.  I like when things wrap up in neat packages.  When there are conclusions and steps to purpose.  When I finish writing something and can tie some sort of bow and say “This. These. Here are the words which have been burning deep and needing to be found.”  But I’m only newly back into the writing world.  And these words themselves are coming out of place of tension – of both insecurity and hope. So, turtles or not, perhaps, the tension must remain.  And maybe little by little it can be less about me and more about the God I wish to serve.  And maybe that will be enough…

The Scar Chronicles

Today is my scar’s 10^th birthday.

Over the years I have come to really love scars – and mine in particular.  (Let’s face it, we have been through A LOT together!)  I love scars for a couple of reasons for sure.  For one, scars have stories!  Oft untold, some unknown, but always more than just the mark they bear.  For two, scars are the reminder of pain but the presence of healing.  It’s proof where something was once broken and hurt, has now been made new.  My scar isn’t “pretty” but the cells used to create that flesh were brand new!  Brand. Freaking. New.  Something broken turned into something healed and whole.  And that will preach…

Everyone told me my scar would be “hardly noticeable” after a year or two but 10 years later and we are still going strong!  Which, honestly, I’m okay with.  I did everything to reduce it early on.  The scar cream and the lotions and protecting it from the sun and hiding it…   But now, if I were to wake up without it one morning?  I think I would miss it.  It is so much a part of me…  And it stands as this incredible reminder.  Life has changed a lot but still it remains.  Much like God’s faithfulness…

Granted, it’s not quite the scar it once was!  From a five inch long slight smile across my neck that was bumpy and slightly grotesque to a nearly 7 ½ inch beauty (second surgery) which was somewhat cosmetically better…to today!  The end is just a faint pink line, but most is still quite visible.    

And so, 10 years later and I still get questions about my scar!  I think when you have a large scar on your arm, people start assuming fun accidents involving ladders or chainsaws or grizzly bears.  When you have a large scar across your neck, people don’t know what to think!  As a result, my scar has garnered quite an array of responses!

When I say array…I literally mean array!  Think less of the color wheel and more of a color spectrum… People’s reactions and responses have been numerous and often hilarious.  Good, bad, ugly, downright confusing… You name it, I’ve probably heard it!

I decided the best celebration of my scar’s 10^th birthday was to chronicle some of those stories.  In the words of another old, good friend – Larry the Cucumber – “I laughed, I cried, they moved me, Bob!”  

So, without further ado…

The Scar Chronicles

When I first came back to SAU after surgery, I didn’t really know how to let people in on the dramatic life changes since we left for Christmas break. Still covered in bloody gauze, I covered my neck with a scarf.  People heard my [nonexistent] voice before they ever saw my neck.  They would always say “Are you sick?”  And, much to my elder sister’s displeasure I would say “Oh! Not really!”  (I thought this was funny because I didn’t have the head cold they expected… Faith did not.)  When they did see my scar, they would gasp ‘what happened?!”  “Umm, over break I found out I had cancer and they took out my thyroid…” was just a little awkward. For the same surprised reaction, however, I found I could tell a better story.  So, I started to say “Well, an old lady came up to me in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  Robbed me at knife point.  Stole my Carmex!” Most looked shocked for like a second, laughed, and then asked what really happened.  While I felt the story softened the blow, I had to stop telling it when the reactions I received included “But why did she want your Carmex?!” and “Was that the Wal-Mart in Jackson?  That is why I NEVER shop there!  I only go to the Meijer.  Way less dangerous!”   People still talk about this story.  Mostly me.

This probably should have deterred me from making up stories but sometimes I still do occasionally for a laugh.  One of my favorites is to tell young people that I was born with my head on backwards, which of course was fine until I wanted to learn how to drive.  So, I had to have a couple of surgeries to turn my head back around.  “If you look closely,” I say while demonstrating “my head still doesn’t sit totally straight.  It kind of points to the left and I can’t get it all the way to the right.  So someday they might have to fix that.”  Most pause and go “nuh-uh! That’s not true!”  And I tell them the real story.  Last year I told it to a kid in a class I subbed (instead of my normal spiel found somewhere below).  He tended to be a bit of a punk and I wanted a reaction out of him.  But he just said “oh” and left. The next day I was in the class again and some other student asked me about my scar.  He whipped around and went “You’re so stupid!  She told us about it yesterday.  She had to have her head turned around because she was born with it backwards!  DUH!”  He body slammed a reading pillow while rolling his eyes at his “ignorant” classmate.  I cleared it up with her.  I have no idea what he believes…

My first scar especially, curved up like a slight smile.  When people ask questions by saying “what is that?” I like to respond with “It’s my second smile!  See!  I smile even when I frown!”  Then I typically frown and trace my smiling scar.  The kids I work with get PUMPED about this. (I was once introduced to a parent by an excited student saying, “see her second smile, mom!”) I can really attribute it back to a friend from college, however.  We worked together on a custodial team and he said, “can I turn your scar into a smiley face?” “Why not!”  I replied, expecting him to take the sharpie in his hands to put two single dots for eyes.  When I realized the dot was becoming a full-fledged eye, it was too late.  What did I do?  Leave it as a cyclops?  Two full sharpie eyes and nose later and my neck had a face!  Which could only be [mostly] removed with 100% acetone!  The smile (without the face) lives. 

For whatever reason, when people see what appears to be a slit throat, they assume the worst.  I’ve gotten many questions about suicide attempts.  My trigeminal nerve, carotid artery, and jugular all sit directly behind my scar (cancer was “carved” off of all three).  If I was aiming with the scar I have, I don’t think I would have missed.  But it also isn’t the residual scar from a rope burn from an attempted hanging.  Guys, I promise I didn’t try to slit my throat! Or hang myself!  Or…anything in that direction!

My scar is (or was), for whatever reason, a people deterrent.  Some have come clean about it.  Others I hear about through the grape vine.  My scar scares people apparently??  It’s how I found out about one of my favorite rumors! 

My junior year I lived on a floor of mostly freshmen.  I pretty much kept to myself (for reasons in another story) but one girl seemed to avoid me like the plague.  For a freshman who didn’t know me, I thought this strange.  But, remember, I was at a pretty tame Christian Liberal Arts College.  We were eating a floor dinner once and I was talking to my RA about my upcoming/recent surgery or something and freshie sat nearby, listening nervously.  At one point she released a visible relief style sigh.  I asked her about it casually.  It was then I found out that, (though it wouldn’t surprise me if it somehow went back to my own mugging at Wal-Mart story…), I found out I was in a gang!  Or had been.  She had been avoiding me because she was afraid.  Because someone told her I had been in a gang.  (This story is WAY funnier if you know anything about me and my general persona in college or high school!).  After her confession, the stories trickled in from others.  At least twice it was reported I got my scar in a gang initiation.  A few times it was in a gang fight.  The most common report was, thank the Lord for redemption, I was in a gang, but I turned my life around and wanted out and they slit my throat.  I’ve never been so hard core before or since!

Not related but part of the “deters people” family of stories…years later I was working in Outdoor Education when I coworker reported the humorous story of a kid who, after being scratched in Reptiles and Amphibians class, declared he didn’t care because girls liked guys with scars!  We laughed collectively before I (it is my fault, really, I don’t know why I said anything!) commented something along the lines of “guys get more attractive with scars, but girls don’t, how does that work??” And a male coworker replied, “It’s true!  I think girls with scars are super unattractive.”  The table went quiet.  Another coworker went, “Dude, Anika has a super noticeable scar…”  To which the first responded with “I know.”  I had long expected my scar was an “attraction deterrent”.  While I had ZERO desire to attract any of my male coworkers, it was the first time it had been voiced so clearly.  Cheers!

Sometimes people get confused about anatomy…

I had a professor that I SUPER appreciated in college.  He cared about his students in and outside of the classroom and prayed and supported me through a lot that first semester especially.  He had this tendency the first few weeks (up to a couple of months) I was back, however, to look at me with these eyes.  Eyes that spoke a pity and an appreciation I didn’t feel I deserved – like maybe I was a living, breathing miracle.  I was in his office middle of the semester, talking about life, and at one point he stopped me.  He said “Wait, when you talk about your thyroid, you keep gesturing to your neck.  Where is the thyroid?”  I explained that it was a butterfly shaped organ that sits over the larynx, toward the base of the neck and I watched a lightbulb go on.  He responded “You’ve always said thyroid, but I think I was thinking hypothalamus.  I thought they opened your neck and went up from there into your brain…  That makes way more sense!”  The conversation moved on from there.  In my mind it was a simple mistake: he thought something first and it lodged.  It happens!  Until I remembered what the hypothalamus does.  No wonder he looked at me like I was a miracle!  Although, I did notice the weird look seemed to stop…

The summer after my first surgery I was counseling at camp.  I, (as part of another no longer remembered conversation), mentioned that I didn’t have a bellybutton (the button was lost with my gallbladder surgery, just the indent-ish hole remains, but saying you don’t have a bellybutton gets a fun response).  The other responded with a quick but otherwise serious “oh! Is that why you have that scar across your neck??”  “No…?” And then I shared the story with my friends and other counselors and we still laugh.

Last year I was subbing in a third-grade classroom.  I had been in this room a few times as the teacher was a friend of mine.  Towards the end of one day, a young gentleman came up to me and said, “Miss Kasper, did you just have a baby?”  I was suddenly very self-conscious and confused.  “No…” I replied hesitantly, waiting for the explanation I knew was coming from this particular young lad.  I braced myself.  “Then why do you have that scar across your neck?”  I chuckled and told him I would tell him tomorrow.  The class left, and I LAUGHED!  At eight years old, I’m glad he didn’t have all of the facts of life figured out yet, but I am still concerned about how he thought babies were born…

Not quite anatomy but questions about my scar sometimes warrant further concern.  Like the young girls who asked about my scar and when I gave them a brief synopsis one replied with wide eyes and not enough laughter to be attempting a joke: “DID YOU DIE???”  She seemed relieved when I told I did not and was still, in fact, very much alive. 

Most people don’t just come up and make comments about my scar unless they are children.  Which I get.  I am totally okay with people asking about my scar and, in fact, I would rather they just ask then create rumors about my shady past.  But I also realize that not everybody is, and I while I know the answer, they don’t!  Others’ stories don’t include a quick surgery.  As a result, however, I am surprised when adults do comment.  Here are some of my favorites: 

• At a grocery store a late teen/early 20’s cashier decided to make small talk by asking “so what’s up with your neck?”  I’m normally pretty vague (because I don’t always have the time or energy to deal emotionally or otherwise with people’s reactions to “cancer”) but perhaps my shock and his abruptness caused me to reply with a simple “Cancer.  Surgery for nearly five hours.”   It is the fastest I have ever seen someone ring up groceries (outside of Aldi – those people are like cheetas!) and he ended with a quick mumbled “have-a-nice-day-ma’am”.  I felt bad for ruining his cheery mood. And also for laughing at him in the car… 
•  As a bonding/why not? activity, I went with my fellow female RA’s and RD boss to do water aerobics my senior year of college. Now, the water aerobics class was about 96% people over the age of 60.  At one point, an elderly(er) gentleman came up to me in the pool.  Pointed to my neck and said “I see you’ve got yourself a zipper! Me too!  Wanna see?”  I didn’t say yes but he moved the swim shorts (pulled up to his chest hair) down to his bellybutton to show me a scar that looked like his gallbladder had been taken out.  I didn’t stick around for the story… 
• I had one concerned stranger tell me in a one sentence lecture that my “neck tattoo” was the reason no one respected my generation. 
• I had someone ask me to explain the meaning behind my confusing “neck tattoo”… 
• I had a kid on a skateboard, however, tell me that my “neck tattoo” was “sick!” with a thumbs up of approval.  Another teen once told me it was a “kickin’ tattoo!”
•  (*Apparently tattoos are like their own section. Do people actually get tattoos to look like scars?  Also, I once joked I would get it tattooed over.  With ivy.  Or barbed wire.  If I wasn’t so attached to my scar as is, I think barbed wire would be sweet!) 
• I have had random people (typically women in their 40’s and 50’s) tell me if they had such a hideous scar they would use some decent cover-up!  Because there is nothing people like better than unsolicited advice from strangers!

My favorite reactions are the ones from kids!  They have less of a filter and less inhibition.  Their natural curiosity lends more quickly to a voiced question.  “Miss Anika, Miss Kasper, Anika…umm, teacher person…” (Depends on the environment) “…what happened to your neck right here?” (as they draw an imaginary line across their own necks…or mine).  I eventually will give them a short health and science lesson that includes them feeling for their own thyroids and telling them some of the important stuff it does and telling them mine “got sick” and had to be taken out.   Before that, however, I always ask “Well, what do you think happened?”  First – it gives them a chance to think about why they asked and what they actually want to know.  Second – it gives me a chance to figure out what people, even little people, think about it.  Third – it often results in funny, occasionally well thought-out, answers…   Including (but nowhere limited to)… 

• You probably just had some sort of surgery or something… 
• A dog attacked you! (I’ve also gotten cat, bear, and dinosaur) 
• You were playing “Red Rover” but they caught you! 
• You dropped your necklace into the fire and you picked up and put it back on when it was still hot and it burned you. 
• You were at a rodeo and the cowboy threw the rope too far 
• You were clothes-lined (this is also a common question of well-meaning adults) 
•  My mom said you shouldn’t play with knives... 
• You were wearing a hoody and you jumped off the playground equipment, but your hood got caught and you just dangled there until someone helped you out of your sweatshirt. *shrug* It happened to my brother once…

*I can’t make this stuff up!  I’ve tried!  Also, when I worked at the daycare it became, unintentionally a favorite story.  Sometimes a preschooler would climb on my lap and request “Miss Anika, will you tell us the story about how you got that thing on your neck?” And then she would summon the others…  I mean, it IS a good story…

I think this synopsis needs to end with the reality that even though I love my scar… I wasn’t always okay with it.  Even when I got past the “make it go away” and found myself relatively attached to it, it also made kind of insecure.  People were/are sometimes weird around my scar.  I can sometimes get weird (unintentionally) around my scar…like it turns darker red when I’m stressed or struggling, and I cover it when I’m feeling vulnerable or overwhelmed…  It left this looming of question of “will people accept me with my scar?”  Not in spite of or despite my scar but with it.  Not because they are able to look past it but because it was so much part of my picture.  It’s no longer the burning question – mostly because I have friends who are stinking amazing…

I was honored to stand in a wedding for dear friends of mine the summer after my second surgery.  That meant that my scar was red, bumpy and noticeable to boot!  I fretted about how I didn’t want attention to be on my scar (for me or others) on their special day.  An older friend said she had some great coverup samples and told me to experiment with them, use what worked, and later give back the rest.  I found one that nearly completely faded it!  BUT it didn’t erase it.  In the end, it was okay.   My newly married friends came and visited around the holidays and brought their wedding album which I had made it into as a member of the bridal party.  My dear friend said, “did I tell you what happened?”  “No…” I replied (trying to figure out if I should tell her I forgot to take my white hair tie off my wrist and it was in like every photo).  She responded “my photographers called when editing photos and said they noticed one of my bridesmaids had a pretty noticeable scar and asked if we wanted it edited out.  I told them ‘no’ and that it was something I loved about you.”  [I told them about the hair tie then because I was a little irritated they could edit out my scar but not my awkward white “bracelet”].  Sometimes when I’m in a funk where I don’t like my scar, or just need to be reminded of the incredible people in my life, I think of this story and tear a little.  I am SO grateful for friends such as these!

So, I raise my glass and toast to the past…because it’s been a hilarious ride!  Happy 10^th Birthday my old friend!  Cheers! 

It's just a sewing tracer! Promise!

After Surgery #1

After Surgery #2 (This is my "I just one a goldfish!"picture)