Deep down in the warm, sparkling waters of a sandy ocean bay, there lived a family of bright red hermit crabs. The mother crab, whose name was Constanza, was very proud indeed. She loved everything to be tidy, and proper, and just right.
One bright morning, Constanza was sitting on top of a smooth piece of driftwood, watching her young son Oliver scurry across the sand. Oliver was having a wonderful time, chasing tiny bubbles and dodging the waving green seaweed.
But as Constanza watched him, her long eyes popped up on their stalks, and she frowned.
Oliver was moving across the ocean floor in a very particular way. He went scoot-scoot-scoot to the left, and then scoot-scoot-scoot to the right.
“Oliver! Stop right there!” Constanza called out, waving her big left claw. “Why in the world do you walk sideways like that? It looks absolutely ridiculous. You are a crab of this bay, and you should walk straight forward in a beautiful, dignified line, with your toes turned neatly out towards the world.”
An Obedient Son
Little Oliver stopped mid-scoot. He looked down at his ten little legs, feeling rather confused. He had always walked this way, and it had always felt perfectly natural. But he loved his mother, and he wanted to make her proud.
“Show me how to walk, Mother dear,” he answered obediently. He tilted his shell and smiled. “I really do want to learn. If you show me how it’s done, I promise I shall practise every single day until I get it right.”
Constanza smiled grandly. “Of course, my child,” she said, puffing out her shell. “It is a mother’s job to teach her children how to behave properly. Watch me closely, Oliver. It is simple. It is graceful. It is elegant.”
The Great Crab Catastrophe
Constanza stepped down from her driftwood perch onto a flat, smooth patch of white sand. A few passing clownfish stopped to watch.
She lifted her front legs, pointed her eyes straight ahead, and prepared to march forward in a perfectly straight line. She took a deep breath. She raised her right claw. She took a step.
Scoot. She went sideways.
Constanza blinked. “Oh. Wait. Let me try that again,” she muttered.
She picked up her left legs and tried to force them to push her body forwards. But a crab’s legs are curved, and they are built to bend sideways, not front to back.
Shuffle, shuffle, scoot. Sideways again — straight into a patch of sea anemones.
“Ma’am,” whispered a polite little starfish resting nearby, “you’re still going sideways.”
“I know that!” Constanza snapped, her face turning as red as a boiled lobster.
She tried again, and again, and again. She twisted her shell. She wiggled her legs. She strained with all her might to force her body to march straight ahead.
Finally, quite determined now to prove her point, she turned her front claws all the way outwards.
“Look, Oliver! Like th-th-this!” she gasped.
But her legs tangled together like a bundle of messy shoelaces. Twist, tangle, slip!
Before she could stop herself, Constanza tripped over her own feet. With a loud SPLAT she went face first into a soft mud bank, landing squarely on her nose. Her shell tipped upside down, and her legs wiggled helplessly in the water.
A Muddy Realisation
Oliver hurried over — using his quick, trusty sideways scurry, which got him there in a flash. He helped his mother pop her shell back into place and wiped the green goop off her nose.
Constanza looked at her own feet. Then she looked at Oliver’s feet. Then she sighed a long, bubbling sigh.
She had, she realised, been asking her son to do something that was completely impossible — even for her.
“I suppose,” Constanza murmured, brushing the sand off her claws, “that sideways is a perfectly fine way to walk after all.”
From that day on she never scolded Oliver about his walking again, and the two of them scooted happily sideways together all over the bay.