Traveling to WVa, Taco Bell toys, Jake and the turtle

We went to West Virginia in what is to be one of the final trips we will need to make to have Chase’s orthodontic work done. The braces are off and the retainers are in. We will have to make one more trip for a routine checkup but it should be the last one for that work. I have lost count of how many trips we made for Chase, but I suppose it has been seven or eight. The end is in sight and in ways we will all miss it.
On the way over we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch. Mama got Jake, who made the trip with us, a kid’s meal – with a toy. This one required a lot of assembly and when he finally asked Chase for help the toy was beyond rescue. So, Mama sent him up to the counter to see if he could get a replacement. We were close so we could hear the conversation.
“That toy was hard to do and I messed it up. Can I have another one?”
“Sure, here you go.”
He skipped over to the table and revealed his new prize. Then he discovered that it was a girl person not a boy person. “Mama Kim, can you believe he gave me a girl one? What am I going to do with a girl one?”
“Well, go up and see if he can find you a boy one.”
So, Jake marches up to the counter and the same young man asks if he can help him. “You accidently gave me a girl one.” Jake says matter-of-factly. (We finally did get it all worked out.)
We stayed with a family from the church we used to attend while we lived in West Virginia and on the way to their house I spotted a turtle, specifically a box turtle. I stopped and Mama went back to collect the turtle. When she gave it to Jake it was fully closed inside its shell. Jake had never seen one and he thought that we were kidding with him. Those who know my relationship with Jake know he would be suspicious of me, but not usually of Mama Kim.
When we got out of the car we set the turtle on the driveway of the house of our host and explained to Jake that the turtle would have to feel safe before he came out. But Jake had been cooped up in a car for over eight hours and he was not in wait-and-see mood so every couple of minutes he would sneek over to see if there was any change. Before long he was knocking on the top of the shell and saying, “Yoo-hoo. Are you in there?” “Are you ever going to come out?”
No amount of explanation was going to discourage his efforts to hurry our captive so I distracted Jake long enough that the turtle was finally sticking his head out to look around as we left the house on our way to church that evening. At least he got to see that there really was a turtle inside that closed up shell. When we got home, it was gone.
Jake was disappointed. We were relieved.