7/21 Turtle Racing (Because my night was otherwise boring)

You would think that for my last week delivering pizza, the universe would crank it up a bit and give me something interesting to talk about. Instead, I had a fairly average shift last night; 9 deliveries, 3 tips were atrocious, 1 was bad, 3 were acceptable, and 2 were good. I called my manager by the wrong name. In my defense, both of their names start with the letter A, they're both skinny, attractive, dark haired, white guys. One is a bit taller than the other and the other wears a necklace.

That was it. Really. So to take up a bit of space I'm going to tell you about turtle racing. Yes, the racing of turtles! After work, the local sports bar (the one that I occasionally have to deliver to) was holding turtle races every hour through the evening. I have an irrational fascination with turtles. To set the mood, you can imagine that I was drinking Michelob Ultra (don't judge, it was half off night and it only cost me $2) and I had just bought tamales off an old mexican guy who was walking around the bar (I have had this gentleman ask me if I wanted tamales before and I had always declined, but being drunk on cheap swill and having heard from a friend that this guy makes his round to all the bars and that the tamales are good, I decided to purchase a dozen hot pork ones).

Now that we have established the setting, turtle racing goes like this:

• Four turtles in a bucket without a bottom
• The bucket is lifted
• The turtles crawl as fast as their legs will carry them (or as fast as they feel like it, which is sometimes not at all) to the edge of a circle marked on some fenced-in astroturf
• The first turtle to the edge wins and the first turtle to win twice is the winner of the entire race

The turtles all had names and bios. I picked Eastside Eddie (#4). Eddie wasn't the racing type last night (but nothing like #1 who never moved during any of the two complete races we saw). His plan consisted of watching #2 and #3 race for the edge, waiting until they were inches away, then sprinting. I'm sure, to him, it was a good plan. He was definitely faster than the other turtles, but no amount of yelling could make him heed the starting countdown. Eddie, I still love you though.

Oh yeah, and I made $35 off of those 9 deliveries, $24 of which was spent on beer and tamales.