Kids can be so mean!!! I'd only complain to you, dear diary, because I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurts, but I really never expected this kind of outright hatred. It's true that my shell has grown quite large (5 and a half whorls!) and I can't fit into most classrooms, so why can't they just walk around me? I've been kicked, called names, and even spat on. And I move pretty slowly these days, so it's hard to come up with a witty comeback, or even a threatening posture.

Most students are really understanding though. And it's not like any of us could do this alone. The mean kids just all assume that incorporating the genome of an endangered land snail is some kind of vain dress-up game, like I just want attention and to say "look at me!" But for every one of us who have undergone "the change" there are 4 or 5 other humanoid students who are our official kin, because we need to work together on all fronts--making official filings with the Psychic Fish & Wildlife Service, helping with habitat reconstruction, managing media relations, etc.

But there's a group of students who just don't get it, and feel threatened by what we're doing. I mean, yeah, I guess we do want to radically dismantle the earth-killing social machine we've grow up in, but I just wish they wouldn't take it so personally.

May 7, 1987