A blonde walks into Walmart and straight back to the pet section. She
examines the bettas, plucks a little red one off the shelf, and takes
it up to the cashier.
"How much for this betta?" she asks,
and then swipes her card without listening to the price, since the
school will be reimbursing her for the fish anyway. The blonde leaves
the store, fish in hand, and gets back in her car.
Does this sound like the start of a dumb blonde joke? It's not.
It's the start of a very serious life-and-death drama, and it is a true
story.
Here's a shocking confession: I am the blonde in this story. The
red betta is my class pet, the honorable Brad Rudolph. The cashier will
remain anonymous.
Wednesday: I took Brad Rudolph - BR,
for short - from Walmart. I placed him securely in Cassidy Jane
Carbaby. I brought him to my apartment.
Thursday morning:
I brought him to school and slid him into his new home: a beautiful
glass fishbowl perched on the windowsill, where he could watch all the
kids play at recess. When my kids came in and noticed him, they loved
him immediately.
Thursday afternoon: We named him. Aka, they named him.
Friday morning: We wrote letters to Brad Rudolph.
Friday
afternoon: I thought to myself: won't BR need to eat over the weekend? I
put Brad Rudolph in the little container I had bought him in and got
him settled back in Cassidy Jane Carbaby. We got back to my apartment. I
poured him into a bigger tupperware container, so he could have some
wiggle room.
Saturday: uneventful.
Sunday: uneventful.
Monday morning: Disaster struck. I couldn't find BR's traveling
case. I poked holes in a water bottle lid and pretended like that would
be okay. I went over to the sink and tried pouring BR into the water
bottle. Before I knew it, I had lost 96% of the water down the drain,
and BR was still swimming frantically around in the inch of water left
in the tupperware container.
I panicked. I tried to
facilitate a gentle transfer by setting the water bottle in the
container so BR could just swim right in, but that just made all these
weird air bubbles rush out of the water bottle and into the water in the
tupperware container, and that just made BR thrash around like a sad
little piece of red seaweed.
Which was just as terrifying as it sounds! I'm not sure what
happened next, but somehow I ended up trying to pick up BR with my bare
hands from off of a dirty plate in the sink, and there was no water in
the tupperware container, and there was barely a centimeter of water in
the water bottle, and when I eventually managed to grab him and drop him
in the water bottle, I remembered that he needed water, so I turned on
the faucet for about half a second before I remembered that betta fish
need special water that has water conditioner drops in it, and tap water
will kill them....
So then I snapped off the tap water, appalled at myself, ran over
to the shelves where Shannon has her betta fishes, and brought one of
them over to the sink. That fish kindly shared some of his water with
BR's water bottle. Then the other fish shared some of his water with BR,
too.
I felt so bad the entire ride to school. I just kept checking my water bottle to see how poor little BR was holding up.
He seemed a little shaken, but he wasn't dead. Just to be
extra-careful, though, I didn't even turn on the radio the whole way
there. I don't want my fish to be deaf any more than I want him to be
dead!
At last we got to school and I was able to pour him back into his bowl.
 |
| Home, sweet home. |
I tell my kids a lot; some might even say that I tell them too
much. But you better believe that this is one story I did not share with
them.
