Thursday, November 10, 2016

The Sea Turtle and the Whale

The Barrier Reef is home to many vibrant families. They all have specific jobs in their community. Each species is so diverse from the other. They usually only mingle with those like them. It's common to find two clown fish cracking jokes with one another. As well as two clams polishing pearls together. But cross-species mingling is not acceptable. 

Ruth, a scrawny year-old humpback whale, never feels connected with her fellow humpbacks. Everyone else her age is twice her size. And on top of that, her sight isn't very strong. She's constantly bumping into large rocks, the reef, and other humpbacks. The others always make fun of her. Joking about her size, "I think you were meant to be a dolphin," one cackles. "Or maybe a mole? Since you can't see a thing!" another adds. Ruth spends most of her time alone, swimming the same route she does day after day. She has it memorized so that she won't embarrass herself by running into things. It's a wide open ocean. It shouldn't be that hard to avoid obstacles. But when an obstacle the size of a silver dollar comes swimming at you full speed, there's really not much one can do!

THUD.

"Ow... what in the world was that?" Ruth rubs the tip of her nose. She looks around trying to figure out what had just hit her. There's a small green object lying on the floor of the ocean. She swims down next to it, inches away.

"Please, don't eat me! I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was swimming!" a little voice croaks from the being lying on the floor.

"I'm not going to eat you, silly! I just can't see very well. Are you a sea turtle?"

"Oh. Yes, I am. My name is Eugene."

"Nice to meet you, Eugene, I'm Ruth!"

"I've never met a humpback. Y'all are even bigger up close." Eugene's eyes widen as she gets up and dusts herself off. "That was quite the collision, nearly knocked me out!"

"And I have never met a sea turtle. You are so tiny, I didn't even see you coming! How did you miss me?" Ruth asks.

"Well, I was playing tag with my friends and I must have wandered off a bit far. I was looking back to see if anyone was chasing me and BAM, I ran into a wall. Or, so I thought. And the next thing I remember was this creature with huge eyes staring at me!" Eugene explains. 

"Well, I am sorry about that. I would have gotten out of your way had I seen you!"

They are both laughing at this point. And from this day on they are inseparable. With Eugene by Ruth's side, Ruth is able to venture out to parts of the sea she has never seen. Eugene is always the eyes of the duo and if they come upon any potential threats, Ruth is big enough to protect the both of them. But others cannot understand why a humpback and a sea turtle would want to be friends with one another. I mean, it is truly unheard of. 

"Glad you finally found someone to take pity on you, Ruth." A girl humpback named Calliope taunts Ruth about her new found friendship. "Looks like a match made in heaven!"

Eugene just cannot hold her tongue. She swims up to Calliope, and shaking her fin in the giant mammal's face says, "You can't understand true friendship till you learn to love someone who couldn't be more different from you. How shallow of you to hate on our friendship. It's possible that our relationship is the deepest one in the ocean. Living the way you do, you may never find a friendship like ours." And with that she turns to Ruth. "C'mon, we don't need to waste time with whales who have nothing interesting to say."

Ruth and Eugene's friendship only grew stronger over time. Their husbands became great friends as well, and their children, and their children's children. To this day they still swim the same route they always have. They are the one reason sea creatures all intermingle now. Diversity is what makes the sea so rich and in embracing it they unlocked a door of endless love and happiness. 

Author's Note:
After reading Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt last week I was inspired to write a story with cute animals in it. Each Jataka tale always has a lesson in it. I wanted to choose a lesson very important to me. That's why my lesson is to accept others no matter how different they may be from you. I love the diversity in our world and can't understand why more of us can't learn to embrace it! Without diversity, the world would be a pretty boring place. I wanted to use a sea turtle and  a humpback because they are such different creatures. My humpback, Ruth, was modeled after a character from Finding Dory. And my sea turtle, Eugene, was modeled after Squirt from Finding Nemo! I feel like these days many are in need of this lesson. We are all too caught up in our own ways to try to accept anyone else. All I ever see on the news anymore is violence and more violence. And it all centers around the same issue, people not seeing eye to eye. I hope that one day we can overcome all of this adversity and learn to love one another despite our diversity. 



10 comments:

  1. This story is so great. I love that you set it at the Great Barrier reef- I've always been fascinated with this, and I'm pretty upset about the decline of it.
    The thought of a sea turtle and a whale becoming friends is just such a happy and fun image. It's cool that you could model your characters after Finding Nemo- one of my very favorite movies.
    You're a great writer, keep it up!
    Emily

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  2. All of these characters are really interesting. Even though they're different from each other, and even though they're made fun of by others, they've been able to form a very deep, long-lasting friendship. This story was a great way to provide the "origin" of the underwater ecosystem's interconnectedness. In that way, it's kind of a more modern fable. I'd definitely like to read more stories about how nature came to be.

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  3. This was such a great story! I haven't read the original yet, but I really like your version! And I love that you included a sort of moral to the story. It was a great way to provide an origin story for the ocean's diversity and it felt relatable, even though it was a whale and a sea turtle!

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  4. This is such a sweet story and I really enjoy the moralizing message at the end. After reading your story planning, I definitely think that you nailed the personification of both Ruth and Eugene, but one area you may want to elaborate on is the part where just after the exchange, we see the line "and from this day on they were inseparable". It's cliche and probably used because of the word count, but sometimes it's enough to snap you out of the story for a bit. Overall, it was a super fun read. Great job!

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  5. I just finished reading the Jataka Tale's by Ellen C. Babbitt too! Don't you just love how each of them try and establish a lesson through the use of animals. They are so entertaining and easy to read. I like how you decided to make your own story based on this style. I thought you did an excellent job! I definitely got the Finding Nemo vibe from this story. I love it!

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  6. I also read the Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt! I loved how all of them develop such clear messages through the stories and dialogue of animals. They are short and easy to read but are very entertaining. I really enjoyed reading your story. I loved how you modeled characters from Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. I found it funny picturing the two swimming around the ocean together because of the large size difference. I thought it was really neat how you made it seem as if all of the ocean is intertwined due to their friendship that was made in the story. I thought you did a great job with this story and I loved it!

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  7. Hello Madelyn,
    This story was amazing! I absolutely loved your mix of Finding Nemo with the original story! I always appreciate when people mix Disney stuff into their stories because honestly I’m a child at heart. I think that you did a great job of setting up the beginning of the story in a way that the reader can understand what Ruth has been going through and why. Your story did a great job of giving a back and forth between Ruth and Eugene. Side note, Eugene reminds me of Eugene Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants so I was a bit disappointed to read that it was a turtle. This story provided a great insight into how easy it can be to overcome diversity in different people and I think that is very applicable in the world today. Overall this was a great story and I could not find any errors that needed to be corrected.

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  8. This story is super cute. I love the emphasis that was made in the beginning of the story of how mixture of mammals being friends was unacceptable. The fact that the turtle became the whales eyes was sweet. It added great emotion to the story. I think the authors note did a great job on explaining everything as well. And the picture used was perfect. Keep up the good work.

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  9. Ah I absolutely love Finding Dory and Finding Nemo and I'm so happy you used that as inspiration for your story! Cute animals are my life as my friends can tell you, and this story is the best! I'm so glad that Eugene and Ruth are such good friends and brought together the entire ocean! I really liked the moral you gave the story.

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  10. The whole time I was reading this I was thinking about Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. Glad I was picking up on the right things! The story is really cute. I also like the author's note. I'm right there with you. Diversity should be celebrated, and not scorned. I don't understand how people could want everything to homogeneous and static forever.

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