I posted the above image on Instagram and a friend asked me why I love 🐙. I have a feeling she isn’t the only one who is curious.

I started using the emoji as a stand-in for every emoji, because I didn’t understand what most of them meant. I felt the most affinity for the octopus emoji of all the animals. I often feel awkward, like I have too many limbs and I don’t have full control over them.

Octopi are incredibly smart, but most people overlook them. They are judged as alien, foreign, weird, strange and slimy. In other words, gross. They are also incredibly clever and graceful animals. I just read an article in the New York Times that talked about how they are a type of mollusk, but since they don’t have a hard shell to protect them, they had to get clever to outwit predators.

I aspire to be as clever as those octopi.

I’ll leave you with this little story. I was talking to someone at work who is more technical than I am. He was making fun of cosplayers – people who dress up in costume like characters from different media – tv, movies, comic books, etc. I said to him, “I might look normal, but I keep my tentacles tucked up under my skirt.”

I’m learning to let them out more these days, and if I thwack you with a tentacle, I’ll try to be gentle.