My friend Gary Pickering and I were waiting for the school bus to arrive on a drizzly morning. As bored but creative sophomores we sought a way to entertain ourselves. The wet sidewalks were a playground for hundreds of brown snails who always emerged when it rained. We watched the growing slime trails as the snails raced to destinations unknown. We then hit upon the idea of staging a snail sprint.
We both selected our favorite candidates. Just as we were placing them on the starting line, our bus arrived. We made a split-second decision to continue the race on the bus. We carefully palmed our contestants and smuggled them onto the bus. We settled into the back row as to not have our activity observed. We placed our marks on the base of the metal-backed seats and started the race.
We quietly cheered them on for a few minutes, but as the activity was going (you guessed it) at a snail's pace, we lost focus. We instead engaged ourselves in conversation with Joy Hansen and Sharon Pittman who were sitting in front of us to pass the time.
As the bus was pulling into the parking lot at the school we realized we had forgotten about our little mollusk competition. We redirected our attention to the race course and found Gary's snail near the top of the seat back. Mine was nowhere to be found. A frantic search turned up nothing, and we were being pressured the bus by the driver to leave. Gary grabbed his entrant and we exited. We quietly joked about the surprise someone was going to get when the missing snail showed up on their seat. We joined the group of our fellow students and headed to campus.
Sixty seconds later we heard an apoplectic Joy Hansen shrieking and gesticulating at Sharon. No one understood what she was saying at first. Finally we discerned one word: Snail. Uh oh....
We ran to Sharon to see what was happening and spied my missing racer sitting on the shoulder strap of Sharon's purse. Once Sharon spotted it she shrieked too and quickly shed the purse from her shoulder letting it fall to the ground. Everyone else thought this was hysterical (including me), but since I was pretty much responsible for the current incident I felt obligated to do something. I quickly walked over to the purse, plucked the snail off and tossed in the bushes. I handed the purse back to Sharon and became an instant hero for the moment.
Gary and I never did confess our deed. So Sharon, wherever you are, I'm sorry for the stress I caused, and that you had to clean snail mucus off of your purse. I hope you can forgive me.
