Turning Turtle

My friend Nadia invited me out to watch turtle racing to celebrate her 28th. Having never heard of this spectator sport, I assumed it was something quaint, like a pastime Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise might have enjoyed on a Thursday night in Far and Away. Not so, according to an email explanation from another friend, Ellie, who's been to the races before:

So about the turtle racing thing...it is disgusting. I have never seen women with lower self-esteem. The whole idea behind the turtle race is really to get chicks to bend over and put the turtles down—you cannot bend your knees. They blow the whistle for a unknown penalty and make each girl do it again, telling them to spread their legs more and taking a picture this time.

A good portion of the turtle droppers wore skirts. When you spread your legs and bend over in a skirt your v-jay-jay is totally out there. especially if you are wearing a thong...or no underwear at all, like one girl thought was okay.

This delightful plot summary was followed by some analysis of the human participants:

It is clear that the skirt girls knew what was going on and many were playing into it. These people are totally psychologically f'ed up. They want attention so bad and are not hot enough for porn so they are willing to go to a disgusting dirty bar and bare their cooch… the thing is, due to the vast amount of vag's that are exposed it is very unlikely that someone will remember yours and come up to you after and compliment it.

I was going to really think about the psychology behind this and if it had something to do with childhood abuse or insecurity associated with something else, but I don’t have the time so for now I am just going to say the girls are f'ed up whores who can't get attention via their brains, so they use their lady parts.

I laughed in agreement, of course, at how pathetic the girls were in their attempts to procure attention at the expense of their dignity, then mused for a moment on the effort people will exert in their search for significance.

But didn't give it too much thought beyond that until this evening at church, where we sang "Jesus Paid it All." When we got to the verse below,

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

which led me to consider the "leper's spots" I'd accumulated during my recent adventuring. This made me think how "stone-hearted" I've been about the incident, which in turn caused me to question what compelled me to do something I find morally objectionable. This sort of psychological introspection can be dangerous if pursued without the assistance of a professional, but I proceeded anyway...

...and after a long and meandering train of thought, realized that I am just as messed up as the turtle racing girls. I guess the plank in my own crotch eye is more problematic than the specs in theirs.