Monday, September 21, 2009

Burt The Goldfish

I witnessed death yesterday.

I was eating dinner with a friend of mine when her goldfish, "Burt", struggling for life, finally let go of this mortal coil and passed on.

Firstly, it is important to note that this friend of mine, Shana, is uncontrollably dramatic in every facet of life, so you can imagine that while finding her goldfish dead would be dramatic in and of itself, watching him actually struggle and give up and die is ten times worse.

We actually watched as he would float at the top for a few seconds, taking slow breaths, make intermittent efforts to swim back down, then get exhausted and float back up... it was actually kind of sad.

So she told all of her friends this heart breaking story and they pretty much said the same thing that I said:
"He's in a better place now."
But then Shana brought up an excellent point. What was so bad about this place? Didn't she give him everything a gold fish could ever want and need to be happy?

Really when you think about it, it's almost sort of an insult to tell people that, true as it may be.

She was a little hurt that everyone seemed to unanimously agree that wherever Burt is now, and no one actually knows where that is, is obviously much better than it was living with Shana.

I thought it was all pretty funny. And that's when we made a live narration of the events with an improvised soundtrack on the piano.


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