I’ve always heard that celebrities die in threes and that certainly seemed to be the case last week when Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson all passed away. However, there are two more deaths that need to be added to that list.
The first is Shifty Powers. If you’ve never watched “Band of Brothers” then you probably have no idea who I’m talking about and all I can tell you is that you need to get yourself to Blockbuster Video or use the Netflix that all the kids are using these days and rent it. It will make you weep at the sacrifice that was made for our freedom during World War II. They were truly the greatest generation.
P couldn’t believe that I talked about Michael Jackson and the moonwalk and neglected to mention that Shifty Powers, a great American hero, had died. I told him it was mainly because I had no idea that Shifty Powers had passed away because the mainstream media neglected to report it. Of course it could also be due to the fact that I get my hard news from People.com and Entertainment Tonight.
Anyway, there was another death that hit a little closer to home. Brace yourselves.
Nemo is dead.
Last Sunday before I left town I decided I should clean his bowl because I knew the chance of P or Caroline remembering that his bowl needed to be cleaned were about the same as the odds of going to Walmart and not seeing someone in a tank top with no bra. In other words, not good.
So I went into Caroline’s room, retrieved Nemo and his (her?) bowl from the nightstand, and brought him (seriously? how do you know?) into the kitchen to clean out the bowl. I quickly realized that Nemo was in bad shape. And I mean bad shape in like it was probably too late to call the priest to administer last rites. Of course that’s assuming that Nemo was a Catholic fish. We never really discussed religion because we only knew each other a week.
I knew I was leaving for the airport in about an hour and I was conflicted about whether or not to tell Caroline that her beloved pet of one week was on his last fins. Finally, I decided that I needed to prepare her for what seemed to be a fairly imminent demise.
“Caroline, baby, Nemo isn’t looking too good.”
“What? What do you mean, Mama?”
“Well, see how he’s just lying there. I think he’s about to die.”
Drama and tears ensue.
So I did the only thing I knew to do in this type of situation. I spun the bowl around really quickly to give the illusion of Nemo robustly swimming around the bowl and said, “Look, I think he’s fine!”.
I know.
It’s like I was Jimmy Lee Farnsworth in “Fletch Lives” and faked a faith-healing ceremony.
(P, I apologize a thousand times. I was desperate and you’re much better at dealing with faux grief than I am. I love you.)
Later that night when I was hundreds of miles away, I told P that he may want to check on Nemo because I was pretty sure he was about to die. I didn’t admit that he may have already died that afternoon and was saved only by my strategic bowl-spinning efforts.
About noon the next day I get a text from P that reads, “Fish dead. Total meltdown.”
It was a high level of drama for a fish that she never showed any interest in other than the three minutes when she fed him a sea monkey. Fortunately, her grief was assuaged when she realized she could flush him down the toilet.
We are consoled knowing he’s in a better place. If you consider a better place to be a sewage system in Texas.
It is with great sadness that I report we’re going to the pet store tomorrow to buy a new fish.
Of course I’m probably not as sad as the poor fish that will end up living in this death trap.