"Mom, Let Me Do It; You Can Write About It!"

photographer unknown

"Mom, let me do it; you can write about it," was the rallying cry that allowed my daughter to motivate me to be manipulated by her curiosity. This is how it all went down...tonight I was helping my husband irrigate our lawn. Mattie, my 16 year old daughter came out to visit when she noticed a snail laboriously climbing away from the water up the irrigation pipe. She was trying to pull it off the pipe, but it had its suction on full power and she couldn't budge it without partitioning it. She didn't want to hurt the snail, so my husband told her to put water on the pipe and the snail would let go. Which it did. She tried to put it on my arm but the thought of a 2 inch snail on my person was giving me the willies. My foolhardy husband let her put the snail on his arm and when she lifted it off, it left a string of boogers. Then she came after me again wanting to set it on my toe. I still refused, and I was very aware that she was willing to hold the shell but not let the slug-looking body touch her skin either. Ha. Those unspoken thoughts were derailed when she put on me the one thing that got me to comply. On the list of my journal writing prompts under the "PROMPT" tab is "Try something new and write about it." It took her two tries before I would let the snail rest on my toe. First response is that it was very cold against my skin and it wasn't as slimy as I thought it would be, soft and not snake-like. I'm glad it didn't suction itself to my skin even though I'm pretty sure a snail isn't a blood sucker. I like their shells, but what I found the most interesting is watching the tentacles of the snail with it's eyes on the tentacle tips investigating my toe. I wonder which of the two of us was more afraid?

JOURNAL PROMPT: Try Something New And Write About It!