Have you ever started something off this way? I’m gonna be pissed if I sleep outside and am eaten by Bigfoot.
I’m gonna be pissed if I…get my fish roommates and they all die.
Don’t judge a Carnie fish, and don’t be sad when they die.
We started with one Carnie Fish from our daughter’s school’s winter carnival. He moved up from one small tank to survive the weekend to a larger tank with two roommates because Carnies aren’t used to being alone.
Right? A lonely carnie is just a sad clown.
A few weeks ago, we moved Alpine, Salt, and Pepper into a new tank equipped with a Saloon and a Whiskey barrel – you know because they live in our bathroom, and when Jessica and I think about the nightmare of our mid-renovation master bathroom, we start to drink.
Or something like that. I don’t know. Maybe they were just cute sound stage sets we found at the pet store.
Wait – it’s coming back to me now. I wanted a pineapple under the sea, and Jessica said no. I don’t know why I wanted that. I’m not a SpongeBob fan. I just saw a pineapple and wanted to place it under the sea.
Jessica is so much more rational than me, so she won. Which means we compromised. With a barrel and a bar.
Anyway, their new condo – under the sea – was large compared to that little one room place near the train tracks our fish had at first. (No, there are no train tracks in my bathroom.)
Know what that means?
Yep – our fish couldn’t afford the rent.
Look. It’s being remodeled, but our bathroom is huge. And it has a view of the mountains and our palm trees. And if one (not a fish) is tall enough, they could look into the pool too. Poolside condos with mountain views are not cheap.
Our fish needed roommates. They needed a bartender in the saloon and someone to mop up the barrel.
I was so excited. And really, after starting with a Carnie fish, we could only move up, right?
So off we go…to Fish Hell. Or Walmart.
I was like a little girl…at the fish tank…in WalMart.
I want this one and this one and that one, and can we take the whole tank home? Don’t all the fish need a good home? Is that a crab? Look, these glow in the dark.
We have three goldfish – well, we have carnival fish. Their scales could be tattooed on. We don’t really know. Navin R. Johnson may have had these fish before us. They were between the pencils and the…well, between here and here… Nevermind, I just lost half of you as you Google Navin R. Johnson. Don’t bother, he’s only in the phone book.
I picked three fish. Another way of wording that is Jessica allowed me to take three fish home. Or we saved three fish from the confinements of WalHell.
One roommate for each of our little guys who had moved on up three times since that winter carnival evening.
Pete, Repeat (they looked exactly alike except Pete was huge and Repeat was a smaller replica), and Jack Jack who was tiny, a fish morsel, if you will, made of fire and brimstone. With the name Jack Jack, he was going to do well behind the saloon bar. Right?
Except Jack Jack didn’t make it through the night.
And Pete is an asshole.
Three weeks later, our group of six is down to two. And I want to cry. Except… I can’t. I don’t have time to mourn fish.
Shhh… we’ll pretend this never happened. And we’ll save more fish… from pet stores this time.
And I’m gonna be pissed if they all die.