Fish

Dear [insert your name],

I am sure you are expecting a mind-blowingly clever blog after resting your eyes upon my title--and you are right. This blog is so clever that even I do not know what it is about (hence the poll). My goal is to entertain you and keep you interested (while keeping my clothes on). Now, I will venture upon the path of sharing a random story of my life with you. Just so you know, the names that I use will be aliases.

For my birthday a while back, my friend (let's name her Tori) decided to get me a Betta fish. I was rather bewildered at first because another innocent life was placed in my hands. Not many people know my dark past...but I have already murdered three goldfish. Apparently, you cannot cram three goldfish into a small fish bowl and expect them to survive--even when you feed them plenty of flakes throughout the day. Funny things, those fish. Anyway, I digress. I decided to name him "Dinosaur" in Cantonese, but for the purpose of this blog we can call him Dino. Dino was not the easiest fish to start raising. He would give you heart attacks half way through the night because he liked to play mind games with you. Whenever you looked at him he liked to sit on the gravel, and I don't mean sit as if he were resting. He would lay there with his big googly eyes and stop breathing. No matter how hard you shook the tank, he would not swim. The best part is that Tori got herself a Betta fish as well. His name is Toothless. Toothless would frolic through the waters and practically have a seizure whenever I poked at the tank; Dino would wallow at the bottom and not budge when I terrorized him. I know what you must be thinking, but you are wrong. Dino was not fat; he was a rather scrawny, blue Betta. To make matters even more unfair, her water was clear as day and mine was as murky as the toilet bowl after liquid poo. During the third night of caring for Dino, I noticed a yellow color spreading around his gills. Even I was not so dumb as to let the notion except me that he was dying.

Then I had the genius solution of making Tori put Dino in her tank with Toothless because my tank must have been the problem. It had to either have been the fake plant or the Buddha figurine that was poisoning my fish. I couldn't possibly have been the problem. I know what you're thinking, but I am not so cruel. Her tank came with a divider, so her fish did not have the chance to kill mine. Surprisingly enough, Dino made a full recovery in her tank. He was swimming around and almost giddy. I then proceeded with my experiments. I hypothesized that either the fake plant or the Buddha was the problem. The first step was to...just kidding, I won't bore you. It ended up being that those items were not poisonous. After a few days, I threw Dino back in. Then lo and behold, he fell sick once more. It hurts the eyes to watch that tiny blue creature drag itself across the gravel. By this time, people were yelling at me for mistreating that fish. Apparently, constantly shaking the tank and trying to get Dino to move was not the best course of action. After leaving him alone for a few days, he actually livened up. Yes! I win. Except then I had to transport him in the car, and he lost half of his water in a speed bump incident. My car seats were unhappy, but probably not as unhappy as he. Inevitably, he reverted back into his moping-in-the-gravel state. However, after a few weeks, I am proud to say that he has made a full recovery.

But the legacy continues. Tori decided to get my girlfriend (let's name her Jadyn) a Betta fish as well for Christmas. Now, knowing this alone may not set off an alarm in your head, but what if I told you that Jadyn is going out of town this same weekend after she receives the fish? It is my duty to care for her fish. But alas, her fish hates me too. Her fish, let's not name it, is already laying depressingly on the gravel. It won't eat anything and is immune to my terrorism. Would it look bad if her Christmas present died in my house before she came back? Probably. Maybe I can film the slow and agonizing death of her fish as a documentary and give that to her as a Christmas present. I'll even add in my own sound effects...but something tells me she won't appreciate it. Let us hope that her fish makes it through these hard times.

Love,
Alexia