Do turtles jump?

Well, do they? Do turtles jump? Can they jump? Do they want to jump? Have you ever seen a turtle jump? If you do a quick search of the mighty web you will probably find a few videos of snapping turtles lunging and hopping and it looks an awful lot like jumping. You may also find various sites that talk about turtles not being able to jump because of the weight of their shells (the equivalent of a 250 pound backpack on a full grown human) and their overall physiology and other limiting factors. The general response on the internet is that turtles do not jump, unless they are snapping turtles and then stay the heck away. (If you are a turtle expert and know otherwise, then please let me know!).

“OK, so…. what?” you are probably thinking right now. Why is she writing about turtles? And jumping? OK, bear with me. Imagine you are a turtle. Imagine you are hanging out in your turtle space with a little water and a little grass and some fish and some flowers and some bugs. And you are sitting in the sun while a soft breeze blows through the grass, half asleep after your big turtle breakfast. You have a good turtle life. THEN… a frog jumps by and your whole world turns upside down and you think “holy moly that is the coolest thing I have ever seen I have to do that right now. I do not even know what that is but I know it is what I should be doing. It is what I want to be doing.” So you try to jump and you cannot. You tell your turtle friends about what you want to do and they all laugh at you or tell you cannot do it. You tell your turtle parents and they tell you jumping is not for turtles and you will get a respectable job crawling thank you very much. And so it goes.

But you keep trying to jump. Yes, you are a turtle. And yes, you should not be able to do this. But. But. But…

So, if I were my own best friend and I were a turtle and I wanted to jump more than anything else in the whole big world, I would remind myself to find a way, despite all the evidence and all the feedback and all the limitations.

Because people have done really amazing things despite everyone saying they could not do it or they did not have the skills or they did not grow up the right way or with the right support or with the right skills. Because if you want it badly enough I don’t think there is a right way or a wrong way. There is simply a way. So go be a jumping turtle.