The Tiny Porpita's Big, Magnificent Dream
Updated: Dec 30, 2020
Today we start the Jellyfish Week. Why, you ask? Why not? These creatures are beautiful and vibrant in color (blue, yellow, pink, and even bioluminescent). They are found in oceans over the world and have been around for 500 million years, even before dinosaurs lived on Earth.
So, about this tiny organism called the 'porpita-porpita'. Yes, I kid you not - there IS such an organism called a 'porpita-porpita' (yes, spelled just like that) that is so beautiful in its shape and appearance that I immediately imagined it to be a flying saucer. It's really tiny, an inch in diameter. It's not a jellyfish, although they are related. Its center is hard and gas-filled, which helps it float, and it is surrounded by blue tentacles.
See below. You'll find many images if you search, some better than others of course, but I like this. It shows the silver-like center and the beautiful blue tentacles. It's gorgeous. Really.
So, why a story?
Because once, on a beach, I met a porpita-porpita and it told me it had a dream...
STORY: The Jellyfish Encounter
One day, a tiny blue porpita-porpita, who was daydreaming, and happily drifting along the ocean, got absent-minded, and entangled in the tentacles of an sea nettle jellyfish. The sea nettle jellyfish not only wanted to swallow the porpita-porpita, but was mean in the process.
“You can't escape me,” the sea nettle jellyfish said. “BWAHAHAHAHA! You’ve no power, no speed, no propulsion! You are at the mercy of the winds. You go where the currents take you. You are a passive drifter. You're a useless float. Meanwhile, look at me.”
The porpita-porpita trembled. She was the size of a blue button. She was tiny, sure, but how annoying was it that she had to listen to this rubbish from the sea nettle? Minutes before he paralyzed her? Injected her with a chemical to dissolve her insides?
“Well, yes...” the tiny porpita-porpita said. "Look at you."
“I'm the most venomous of all. I sting. I paralyze." He guffawed. "I KILL!"
"Excuse me!" the porpita-porpita said, who liked to be accurate. "You are NOT the most dangerous and also, no, you are NOT that venomous. I can think of creatures..."
"Shut up! This is your last moment, so enjoy it as much as you can. Then I will kill you."
"Fine," the little porpita-porpita said, shuddering and thinking hard about what she could say to postpone the inevitable. "Fine. Okay. But aren't you... uh... forgetting something?"
"Forgetting something?" the sea nettle jellyfish said, annoyed. "What?"
"If this is to be my last day... I... uh... I want my last wish."
"Eh?" the jellyfish said. "Why your 'last' wish?"
"You're killing me, that's why!" the porpita-porpita said, irritated. "You big brainless buffoon. In the world of humans, the most benevolent kings, when they order or condemn a person to death, give them a last wish. Humans are more advanced than jellyfish, as you know, so..."
"Damn nuisance!" the jellyfish said, frowning. "The humans might be more advanced but we have lived far longer than them. We have lived for 500 million years. Let them try to do that - then we will see. The most bene... bene... bene... what?"
"Be-ne-vo-lent. Kings."
"Well... " The jellyfish didn't know the meaning of benevolent and didn't want to look stupid.
"Right!" he said, briskly. "Of course! Okay. I agree. I'll give you a last wish."
"You promise you will fulfill my LAST wish?"
"Give you my word - as the MOST poisonous jellyfish with the LONGEST tentacles on..."
"You're not the most poisonous," the porpita-porpita said. "Neither with the longest..."
"I WILL EAT YOU IF YOU KEEP INSISTING I'M NOT THE BIGGEST AND THE MEANEST."
"Okay, fine, but you have to make my last wish come true first!" the porpita-porpita said, fiercely. "That's what a last wish is. You said you would give me my LAST wish and my last wish is that my DREAM should be fulfilled. My DREAM! If you are going to give me a last wish, you've to make MY DREAM come true. That's what I want. Now, you fulfill it."
The jellyfish realized the predicament he was in.
"No," he said.
"What?" the porpita-porpita said. "You said yes just now! A deal is a deal is a deal!"
"I don't care, I don't care, and honestly, I don't care. Now, I'm going to kill you."
"You'll be forever remembered as a jellyfish that broke his word."
"Oh!" the jellyfish said, in mock horror. "That would haunt me for the rest of my life! Rest of my days. It would break my spirit, ruin my soul, block my chakras! Oh, yada, yada, yada! Like I said, I DON'T CARE! I JUST WANT TO KILL YOU! Now for MY fun. WHAT IS your dream?"
"My dream?" The little porpita-porpita cleared her throat and paused. She thought of her dream. It had always been a fantasy, a desire in the back of her mind that had no chance of succeeding, something she wished she had the ability to make true, but knew would never happen. "I want..." she said, and trailed off into silence. "I want to..." she began again. Not knowing how to say what she had in her heart, she fell quiet a second time.
She was quiet for a long time.
The ocean waves lapped around them, seagulls swooped overhead, and a gentle sea breeze caressed the tops of their heads. The porpita-porpita trembled. She was so small. A nothing, a nobody. The sea nettle jellyfish was right. She had no power, no speed, no propulsion. She was a passive drifter. Which was why it took more courage to speak of her dream than to face death. But she gathered her courage. What was the harm in telling it to a brainless jellyfish?
Especially if she was about to die?
"I want," the porpita porpita said. "To be an underwater vehicle - a magnificent blue, circular submarine, with navigation and speed faster than any submarine, anything known to humans - I want to be the PINNACLE OF NAVAL TECHNOLOGY... to be a FLYING SUBMARINE!!"
Saying that, the porpita-porpita began to bawl.
Great big tears poured out of her tiny button head.
The jellyfish watched her for a second. He stared, his eyes like big saucers. Then he began to laugh. He roared so hard that he doubled over, keeled on his side, rolled back, then dipped in front and tumbled again. His head got tangled between his tentacles. “Pinnacle of what? Naval technology? My goonozoid!” He fumbled and choked while all his tentacles tightened around his bell more and more. “You are a float. You are full of gas. What a hoot. Pinnacle of naval technology indeed! Never heard of a sub... sub... whatever. Oh, I have not laughed this hard in years! OUCH! I'm knotted up. I cannot move. AARGGH! OUCH! Help me. Please."
The porpita-porpita wiped away her tears and shook her head. "It isn't funny, you moron and I would rather not help you kill me, if you don't mind. Besides, that will teach you to laugh at my dream, such as it is." And the porpita-porpita floated away from the jellyfish to safety.
Much later, when she was far, far away, the porpita-porpita thought of her encounter again.
Who knew, one day, her dream would save her life?
Crazy, impossible, magnificent dreams were good for something after all.
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