Fish & Secrets

This past weekend I learned that keeping a secret is a lot like keeping a fish alive. You can try and try to keep it, but sometimes you kill it anyway.

I had planned a sort-of-surprise party for Shannon's birthday. It was also sort-of-short notice. Asia found out about it when she heard me on the phone. She actually did really well keeping the secret. In fact, up until Friday night, you'd not have known she knew anything about it. After her softball practice that night, we went to eat at the Brass Lantern. While there, she told Shannon that he would be so happy about his surprise that he would "hug all of us."

When we got home that night we checked on the fish. I had taken them out of their bowl and put them in a jar while I cleaned the bowl. I added the clean water to the fish water a little at a time to adapt them to the clean water. Asia had been doing a much better job at caring for these fish. At least she wasn't trying to scoop them out with a glass or trying to feed them popsicles anymore.

The next day, I sent Asia and Shannon out for a few hours where I could finish cleaning the house, preparing for the party, and finally get the fish back into their bowl. I did all of this. When I put the fish back in their proper home, they were more active than they'd ever been. Lilly was attacking Goldy. I guess it was because they could finally see each other; it must have been easy to hide from each other in the old nasty water.

Shannon and Asia came home before 2:00. Goldy had to be removed from the bowl and put into protective custody, away from Lilly. She had scales missing from one of her sides and her fins looked like the sails of a ship that had just encountered a hurricane. Randy and Martha (Shannon's dad and stepmom) came a little after 2:30. Right away, Asia started whining about being hungry. I took her into her room and told her that we could not eat until the other guests got here in an hour. She kept whining and got sent to her room. Shannon went in her room to see what her problem was and she said, "I'm so hungry and Mama said I can't eat until the other guests get here in an hour." That secret was on life support already, and Asia just pulled the plug.

Then, I discovered Goldy had nose-dived to the bottom of the jar and was straight up like a sunken submarine stuck in the abyssal plain. She wouldn't budge. We all checked her out; we shook and tapped the jar. She was dead, just in time for the aforementioned guests to arrive. I left her just as she was, nose down in her vessel of death, in the middle of the kitchen table. Sounds a bit morbid, I suppose, but it sure made a good conversation piece when the other guests arrived shortly thereafter.

It was fun. I think Shannon was happy people came to see him for his last birthday in his twenties. There couldn't have been a more beautiful day for it. Asia went to Wal-Mart with Dad and Kendra afterwards. While she was gone, Shannon flushed Goldy. We met Asia at Wal-Mart when we went to go get groceries. The party was over; the surprise was spoiled; Goldy was dead, but to say my surprise efforts were unsuccessful would be wrong, at least somewhat. I mean, who expects to come to a party and snack while you stare at a dead fish (one that you're not about to eat for dinner)?