I know the jokes. I know all the jokes.
Turtles are slow. Turtles are incredibly, famously slow. You want something slow, you call a turtle, but be prepared to wait.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get jokes about being shell-shocked or being a teenage mutant something or other, to break up the monotony, but mostly it’s all about how amazingly slow you are, plodding and creeping and easing your way through life, slow of foot, slow of mind, while the rest of the animal kingdom leaves you in the dust.
Tell you a secret.
In the water, we’re faster than you are. Seriously. The average turtle can swim 10 to 12 mph, and sea turtles can get up to 22. On Michael Phelps’ best day he hit 6 mph. 6! Might as well be standing still.
We are damn graceful in the water. We dart back and forth, letting our shells handle the floating part while our feet paddle us along. We swoop and glide and dive around each other. It feels amazing, like flying. Humans? Pfah! I’d never want to be one!
I especially wouldn’t want to be, say, a middle manager for an investment firm who was caught cheating on his girlfriend, whose grandmother knew the Dark Arts and who took such betrayal so very, very hard. I’d never want to be that guy.
A turtle in the water is the thing to be. Seriously.