The Fish Adventure; A Satirical Report

Article by Lidia Ferenckaivo 10d (Published 28.01.2024)

The days following up to Christmas are always filled with excitement and a certain kind of thrill. The whole year we wait for this one magical night filled with food and presents. Maybe your Christmas is filled with only joy and love. Or maybe it's filled with screaming parents and slamming doors. Or maybe you don't celebrate Christmas at all. The point I'm trying to make is that in the weeks before the 24th we have to go shopping. A lot. Food shopping, gift shopping, Christmas tree shopping. So on this occasion I went to buy a christmas tree at a hardware store with my dearest mother. As we were walking towards the sheltered forest of dead trees we walked by a wall filled with aquariums. The shop was just about to close, we were the last customers. I could feel the cashiers watching me, waiting for me to be done so they could go home to their families or to their empty apartments. It didn't matter. It was 22:00 o'clock. They had a right to be tired. 

So as I walked past the aquariums I decided to stop and take a look at the fish. I thought how absurd it was that there were all these bubbling aquariums in a silent darkening shop. You looked to your right and there were hammers and nails for sale and then to your left christmas trees and there, in the middle, dozens of fish tanks. I took a closer look and watched the colourful fish, swimming around. I tapped on the glass with my nail, as anyone would, and watched them react to the foreign intrusion into their lives. They probably felt the vibration all around them. They saw my looming face watch them. A giant, observing in curiosity. Maybe they felt anxious. Anxious? Fish don't have emotions. Well, over the course of my little fish adventure I have learned that, yes, fish feel deeply. Sadness, joy, everything that humans feel. So we're not supposed to tap on the glass of their tank because it stresses them out. Of course then I didn't know all this. Surprisingly, without even having to beg my mum, she let me buy a fish. Perhaps it was the anticipation of Christmas that was in the air, perhaps it was the thrill of new beginnings at the end of the year, but she let me purchase my first ever pet after years of asking for one, albeit a fish but it's still something. So I went to find a staff member and I asked to buy a fish. A few minutes later and I was walking towards the car, a plastic bag filled with water and a fish in one hand and in the other holding the tip of the christmas tree. 

At home I took some flowers out of a round vase we had and I put my fish in there. I didnt know its gender so I decided to name it Judy. We named the Christmas tree John so I liked their names matching. 

The first few days of fish ownership were filled with responsibility and love. I slipped into a routine. Change the water, feed it, say goodnight to it. I placed the glass bowl next to a mirror so that maybe it wouldn't feel so lonely. I was trying to trick it into thinking it wasn't swimming all alone in a tiny glass bowl. I kept googling what makes a fish happy and all the internet fish gurus were telling me that I should never keep my fish alone in a small tank without any nooks and crannies for it to hide in or some plants. That’s exactly what I was doing. So the guilt started to creep in. My fish had not been alone at that hardware store before and here we were. I had given my fish a worse life than before. Hence, to make up for that, I tried to make it feel loved. I would talk to it, watch it swim around, feed it extra food sometimes. Probably just giving it digestion issues but still, I tried my best. I got to know my fish throughout those first few exciting days. Well, at least I figured out that it was male. So now I had the dilemma of changing its name. Jack? Julian? No, none of them worked. Mario? It was red. Maybe. 

I still haven't decided on a name when one day I got that dreadful phone call. My mother, who was sick at home, had decided to change the water in its tank. I sat in the school mensa, still chewing on my pesto pasta, listening to my mother sobbing on the other end of the line. She said, Oh, you'll never forgive me. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, it was an

accident. I was confused. Then she explained in a tearful voice. She had put too warm water in the tank and my fish had died. Cooked to death. Drowned and burned, both at the same time. 

It had been swimming around frantically back and forth and my mum thought that it was happy and it liked the hot water. But no, after half an hour it slowed down to a stop and slowly floated to the top of the fish bowl. I told my mother not to worry. After all, it was just a fish. But I know that in her heart she felt the significance of her actions. She felt the guilt and the pain. She was responsible for the death of another living being. 

In the book “The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry there is a rose that the prince takes care of and perhaps as a reader you do not understand the significance of this rose. After all, it's just a flower. 

But the fox tells the prince: “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” 

My fish is not important in the long run, it was going to die anyway, it is small and insignificant to the world and yet my mother will never forget the feeling of burying her daughter's fish in the backyard. She wrote a note and buried it with the fish. It said: Dear Fish Judy, I am sorry for making your water too warm! I didn't want to hurt you! I hope you have a wonderful life in fish heaven! My fish didn't even have a proper name before it died. 

And then she went back to that hardware store and bought me another fish. A blue one this time. Judy or Mario or Jack is long forgotten. My new fish is called Bubbles. Blue and bubbly. 

Grief is immeasurable. When I told my friends my fish died they laughed. It had become a running joke. I would walk into class and say, yup, my fish is still alive. I imagined the day it would die. I thought to myself that I would most definitely cry. But I didn’t. My mother cried for me. She felt innocent guilt. It was an accident. Imagine the pain you feel when you accidentally hurt someone or something much more significant than a fish. A child, a loved one. Unimaginable. 

Sources: 

Saint-Exupéry, A. de. (1993). The little prince. Harcourt Brace & Co.