heroes on the half-shell.

I believe that you can tell a little something about a person based on how they feel about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When the old show first started airing on Saturday mornings back in 1988, I was in the target audience.

I've never seen the movies. I've seen part of the beginning of the first one, which I watched with my friend Brandi, whose parents had a TV in their van and who let her watch movies with bad words. My parents were not like this. I remember watching it and wondering why it was so dimly lit and why the costumes were so crappy. Eight years old, and I was unable to get past the fact that I was watching a grown man in a turtle suit. Then Raphael said the 'S'-word, and I felt a little betrayed.

I watched the TV show long after I had seen all the episodes. Really, I probably had aged out, but I watched them anyway because we didn't have cable. Five channels and not a thing to watch. Then I watched an episode that Josh happened to have in his video collection, left over from his grade school days. You know how some shows work on multiple levels such that when you watch them again in your twenties, they're still as good as you remembered? TMNT is not one of those shows. It's awful.

But everybody watched it at that age. And so I think you can tell a lot about a person by their favorite ninja turtle. Now, obviously, Donatello was the best one. He was always building these crazy inventions that completely saved the day. Donatello was turtle ex machina. He solved problems with his mind.

But I've heard that other people, for whatever foolish reason, do prefer other turtles. I can sort of get on board with Raphael, who made all the sarcastic commentary. Raphael always seemed a bit bitter to me, though, like a turtle who'd lost hope. And Michaelangelo might be fun at a party, but he lacked depth. Yes, yes, I enjoy pizza and dancing, too, Mike, but can we sit down and talk about some good books we might have read lately?

I played ninja turtles with a cousin that I had for a while. Can you have temporary cousins? I did. She was a foster kid who lived with my aunt. She was roughly my age, and I remember playing with her one summer while our families were both visiting my grandparents' farm in Kansas. We were probably about nine. And she liked Leonardo. This totally blew my mind. I mean, really, who likes Leonardo? Yeah, he was the leader, but his main interests was apparently teamwork. His favorite book was The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (his favorite is number six: synergize). Leonardo was a nice guy and an effective leader, sure, but he was just so bland and boring.

I hope that my nine-year-old self never said, "You like Leonardo? Really? People do that?" That sounds totally like something I would have said. Hopefully, I was caught in the dilemma of wanting to convince her of the superiority of Donatello while enjoying the fact that I didn't have to fight over getting to play Donatello.

Of course I didn't think your favorite ninja turtle said anything about you then. I didn't even really understand why people liked turtles other than Donatello; I assumed that they hadn't really thought about the issue carefully. But I think now about my peers and I feel like I can almost pick out who their favorite turtle would be. I also understand all too well that a lot of people don't automatically associate smart with ultra-super-cool. And I think about my temporary cousin, who had been shuttled around to who knows how many different families. Maybe all she wanted was someone stable who would take charge of her life once and for all.

I think I have just composed the most profound piece of writing on the subject of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the history of time. Turtle power!