a turtle's shell is decorated but gets weighed down by the weight of it

one of my favorite movies is a gay romance movie called "Those People" (highly recommend it, it's not a well known movie at all but it's really good and not as completely heart wrenching as some other gay romance movies). anyway, one of the main characters is a painter and in one scene he's talking in his class about his inspiration for his recent painting he describes a story about a boy who owned a pet turtle. the boy decorated its shell with ornate gems but the turtle was eventually crushed by the weight of the ornamentation. it was something like that. the story is used to give context of the life of the other movie character that's depicted in the painting. there's no other reference to the story in the movie or any talk of it other than a quick description like the one I gave you.

is this story a real story I can read for myself or was it just a really good detail made up by the writers for the movie? I really want to read the full story if it exists