Sea Turtle
It was one of those days…
The type of day where you wake up in total darkness in a strange place. Confused. Maybe a little scared. The type of day where your entire family has already gotten a move on and you're the last one to leave the house. The type of day where there’s no time for food. No coffee, no water, no nothing. Just gotta get going.
The warmth of a small ray of sunshine is your only indication that daybreak has come. Towards the light. Must crawl… towards the light. The type of day where every step forward feels like you’re taking two steps back. As if the ground is crumbling beneath you as you fight your way out of a hole that just keeps backfilling. Because you’re literally in a pit of sand.
You know, just one of those days…
As you make your way towards the heat, your eyes absorb the full brightness of the sun as it beams down on you. A vast stretch of land, larger than anything you’ve ever known, unfolds beneath you as you blink away the early morning grog. You see dozens of your brothers and sisters hustling away, dotting the landscape with tiny dark specks. The distant roar of a giant crashing wall beckons. Foreign, yet somehow familiar. The dry air triggers your thirst. Instinctively you know you’ve got to run towards that wall. Actually, more like straight into that wall. No time to stop and think how that’s likely to play out. Just gotta keep going.
As you take your first few steps, you can’t help thinking about how nice it would be if you were naturally built to live on land. You imagine what it would be like to sprint over the open beach and dive headfirst straight into the water. A small stick in your path provides a stark reminder about what you’ve got to work with. Flippers. Nice.
As you struggle your way over the stick, a premature celebratory head bob causes you to slip, slide, and tumble onto your back. The world you’re just getting to know has now been flipped upside down. As you fight to right yourself, you catch sight of giant creatures zooming around the air. On closer inspection, some of them are carrying away some of your brothers and sisters. That can’t be good. Using a flipper as leverage, you channel all of your strength as you press off the ground and acrobatically roll upright. Blinking sand out of your eyes, you orient yourself and get moving again. Your insatiable thirst drives you instinctively towards the water. Keep going.
You get into some kind of an awkward rhythm. Left, right, left, right. Hey, you’re getting the hang of this! You’ve learned your lesson about the mischievous sticks, and navigate deftly around seashells and small rocks. If it wasn’t for the whole ‘literally need water to live’ thing, maybe life on land wouldn’t be so bad?
A sharp pain in one of your flippers snaps you out of your daydream. You look back just in time to see a terrifying creature with razor sharp claws pop out of the sand next to you. Its small black eyes squint unflinchingly as it extends its legs to tower over you. You’re still trying to process what’s happening, but suspect that the pincer-grip on your flipper is probably not emblematic of a fun new friendship. You wriggle free and assess your arsenal of ancestral combat tools. Talons? No. Claws? No. Teeth? No. Well, technically one but it’s not of much use. You realize your options are limited. Extremely limited.
Without any proper means to attack, you hope that a strong defense can counteract a non-existent offense. A shell! Turns out that your distinguishing defensive characteristic is still too soft to provide much protection. Wonderful. You make an effort to move backwards, but can’t. The only path is through.
The predator punches a razor claw through the air, targeting your soft squishy neck. Your ancestral reflexes cause you to duck as the claw whizzes over your head. You duck left as it jabs right. Head-bobbing like a prizefighter, you dodge a flurry of punching razor attacks. Suddenly, the creature takes a step out of your path. One chance. Gathering up your courage you power straight ahead, propelling yourself forward at a newfound pace. No time to look back. Just gotta keep going.
You settle back into a groove as the roar of home gets closer and closer with each inch forward. Your singular focus blocks out everything else. Water droplets hitching a ride on the wind hit your face in a refreshing, cool mist. The air is getting saltier now. A short sprint and you’re there.
As you gather yourself for the final push, you’re suddenly knocked off balance as a blast of sand hits you square in the face. You crane your neck up as far as it will go to see one of the giant winged creatures looking down at you with death in its eyes. The sound of the ocean is replaced by the sound of its stomach growling. You’ve learned by now that the only path is through.
You lunge towards the ocean as the creature launches its attack. You feel the weight of its beak hit the sand right behind you, spraying pebbles crashing into your back. As you scamper between its legs, the creature hops backwards, almost crushing you under its feet. You continue to scramble forward as the creature attacks again. Another miss. It lets out a frustrated screech and shakes the sand out of its mouth. A pool of receding water comes into view as you manage to once again skirt under its legs. And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the creature is gone.
You rumble forward and take a big salty gulp of liquid as you feel the full force of its cooling moisture for the first time. You finally grasp the advantage of flippers as you half-stroke / half-crawl your way along the edge of the shallow water. You allow yourself to be pulled into the current and then the curl, flippers aching from the effort. You close your eyes as you brace for impact.
It doesn’t come.
You open your eyes to find the desert-like obstacle course you just navigated sprawled out below you. Carcasses of your brothers and sisters line the beach. The sensation of cool water against your body is replaced by the all-too-familiar feeling of dry air. The water becomes more distant as your world starts spinning. As you dangle upside-down, you look-up and stare into the dark eye of the winged creature. Oh, come on. Seriously?
As you get further and further away from the ground, an odd sense of calm takes hold. You try squirming and flailing, but each movement becomes more and more exhausting as you strain unsuccessfully against the creature’s vice-like clamp. Trying to ignore the pain in your flipper, you recall the berserk chaos of the past few minutes. You allow yourself to just enjoy the ride. For the first and only time, you're soaring at high speeds across the vast blue expanse of home. You close your eyes, shielding yourself from the sting of the whipping air. The bright morning light radiates warmth on your face. And then, just as your body goes limp, your flipper slips a little bit. It’s just enough. The creature snaps at the air as it releases its grip for a split second to get a better hold. But there’s nothing there. You’re outta there, man.
You open your eyes to an alternating vortex of dark, light, dark, light, dark, light. The crashing roar of the waves gets closer and closer. Flapping your flippers through the air, you flip, tumble, and fall towards the water. An optimist might call that flying. An ice-cold *smack* hits you as you slowly sink into the murky foam, enveloped by shades of black and blue. A strange new world of shapes and shadows appears. Bobbing in the ebb and flow of the current, you take a few full strokes and feel the full power of your small flippers. Flashes of reflective light zip around you as you make your way further from shore. What a morning! What a life!
…
It was one of those days…
The type of day where you just want to crawl back into bed, close your eyes, and try again tomorrow. The type of day where it feels like you’re out of gas, and it takes energy you don’t have just to get out of bed, shower, and head out the door. Trying to multi-task because you’re running late, you watch in slow-motion resignation as the full cup of coffee, your only life source, somersaults out of your hand and faceplants all over the carpet. Then, after you’ve cleaned up the mess and plopped into your car, you remember that you are, in fact, literally out of gas.
You know, one of those days.
As I sat in traffic, still grumbling about the cost of filling up the tank, I happened to notice a little white sticker in the rear windshield of the car in front of me. Maybe on a different day, the sticker would go unnoticed. But today, the little sea turtle seemed to be winking back at me. I half-smiled back. The car behind me honked its horn the instant that a 3-foot gap opened up in front of me. Keep going. Just gotta keep going.
–