On turtles and me.

[unbibium]

Between the recent "what animal is your daemon" quiz floating around, and my recent visit to infrogmation and his frog-filled apartment, and jecook's whole deal, and that one episode where Janeway met her spirit animal and it turned out to be a lizard, and everyone laughed because she has a lizard voice... anyway, it got me thinking about what animal I most identify with.

And I concluded that it would probably be a turtle.

Not necessarily because of the slow speed, but because of the shell. I tread carefully forward, and when I perceive any danger, real or imagined, I withdraw and lurk.

I had a brief fascination with turtles when I was young. As a child, we're taught about animals, and we're asked about our favorites. And when I picked my favorite animal, I picked the one with which I identified with the most. This was about the time I would ditch gym class and hide in the classroom while everyone else baked outside. I think I had a pet turtle once that didn't quite make it to a hundred years. I'd draw pictures of them a lot, and I thought they were cool. And perhaps, at its subconscious root, I wished I had a shell in which I could hide and be safe from unfamiliar things.

This didn't really carry on into my adolescence. At first, I blamed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for diluting my enthusiasm. But, more likely, the Mario Bros series of games just ruined it for me. After all, the turtle-like characters in that game are most vulnerable while they are in their shells. They can be kicked off the map entirely, slid across the ground to break bricks or defeat others, picked up and thrown either at enemies or into bottomless pits. And I didn't really identify with them nearly as much.

And while I've never identified myself as a turtle, I've been using the shell metaphor to describe my social mood for years. When I'm in there, you're lucky to get two words out of me. When I'm out, which is increasingly rare this year, I'm... well, more outspoken, at least.

Unfortunately, you can't get much done from inside a shell. That's why they have an outside, you know.

As I like to do with metaphors, I like to see how far I can stretch them before they snap. So, if I were to imply other turtle-like traits from this, what would they be?

• Turtles are cold-blooded, and when people are cold-blooded, it means they are emotionally distant.
• Turtles come in three distinct varieties:
  1. Desert tortoises, which are timid and spend most of their lives underground to escape the heat, making them the closest match to my personality. But they're the only herbivorous subgroup.
  2. Painted terrapins are short-lived, laid-back, and live in large groups. Maybe you know someone like this.
  3. Sea turtles are large, endangered, and cannot hide in their shells.
  4. Snapping turtles are aggressive enough to attack even the mighty human being. And they're nocturnal.
• They hatch from abandoned eggs, and do not raise their own young. That's not a match.
• The Holisticshop Dictionary, which I'm sure is as reputable as it sounds, spouts a lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo, though this bit rings slightly true: "Turtle teaches to try and enjoy the journey as much as the final achievement. To focus too much on the end of something means you will often find yourself dreaming of the future, which will leave you ungrounded and unhappy. So have around you the symbol of turtle when you wish to remain grounded and take joy in what you have been given."
• Turtle Graphics is a paradigm that was used in the 80's to teach children how to program. For those unfamiliar, the idea is that you can draw a picture by giving a turtle commands like "FORWARD 50" or "RIGHT 90". I learned to program in this, and in BASIC, starting while I was in kindergarten. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.
• Seeing Dana Carvey in that green suit and bald cap in "Master of Disguise" chanting "TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE" was very silly and did not convince me to see the movie.
• Though the ecology of the Galapagos Islands is often cited as inspiring Darwin's theories, but I can't find a specific mention of turtles in his work.
• In Frogger, some turtles can be jumped on safely, but others will dive from underneath you and you'll lose a life.

I don't know; perhaps animal spirits are like horoscopes: vague enough that any given one will match everyone at least a little bit.

But, perhaps I should get some token turtle paraphenalia to decorate the apartment. There's not enough green in here.

Comments

[davetheinverted]

The mascot of the University of Maryland is the terrapin, as portrayed here.

Dav2.718