Splinter Week Day 1: Humor
“…Cause if I had known about the glass ceiling in this industry, I would have brought my skyscraper,” Raphael concluded, snickering. “Not to mention a turtleneck!”
Idling at the stovetop, waiting on his kettle, Splinter had only been partially listening to the routine but he wasn’t the intended recipient anyway; at Raphael’s eager insistence his fellow turtles had gathered on the couch to serve as his test audience.
Thanks to his absorption in his task, Splinter had a feeling he had missed some of the buildup. Sensing that was meant to be the big punchline, however, his ear instinctively quirked in anticipation. But he heard no laughter.
“Is that it?” Donatello wondered.
The responding silence was deafening.
Oh, dear. Heart sinking, Splinter peeked over to find Raphael frozen on the spot, obviously flabbergasted that the joke hadn’t landed and unsure how to proceed.
“Uh. Yeah. That’s all, folks,” he managed weakly.
When Michelangelo offered a stilted, awkward clap or two, it was the opposite of encouraging. Raphael shrank, turning hurriedly away to snag his nearby notes. The paper’s painful crunch mostly drowned out his mortified muttering (something about a swing and a miss, inflections off, poor structure, wrong order, sorry for wasting their time, stupid, stupid) but the color flooding his cheeks spoke much louder.
Days on end Splinter had seen him poring over those notes, over every detail, painstaking, passionate as he was about little else—only for it to end like this? What he’d caught from the kitchen hadn’t seemed half bad!
So he laughed. He may not have been the target audience but the sound stopped Raphael’s hasty retreat halfway to his alcove.
“I understand now. Not a skyscraper as one would think of a building but something with which to scrape the glass ceiling, like a squeegee! And a turtleneck for the weather up there,” he exclaimed, still chuckling. “Forgive me for piecing it together so belatedly; I was distracted by my tea. What clever wordplay, my student!”
Raphael’s hunched shoulders softened ever so slightly, shyly.
“Y-Yeah, well…Thank you. I’m here all week.”
