18th
Seven Fish & Seven Blogs
I’m not so great with plants. Phileena takes care of what’s green in our living space.
I’ve not had the best luck with fish either.
February 12 is Adina and Annie’s birthday, a real fun day to celebrate two great ladies. But for me it’s also a day of mourning. It was the day that Phileena and I adopted w.nelson.mandela.
That was 2005. w.nelson.mandela was a red beta. He was the 3rd fish I had to “single parent.” Good looking too. And I loved that fish. I even started a gmail account for him (don’t try sending him anything, of course, he won’t be responding now). We even got him on a plane—more than once.
By the time w.nelson.mandela killed himself in Calcutta (that’s right, jumped right out of his little cup of water in the YMCA guesthouse), he had already traveled quite a bit. I’d put him in a Nalgene bottle and pack him in my backpack (that’s before the no-fluids in-flight rule).
That little fish had flown all over the USA and made a couple trips to Asia including Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and 2 visits to India. Since we were on our way to Nepal when he died, I dried out his little corpse and we buried him in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in Kathmandu. True story.
He’s part of a long line of what Nika Cotton and Emily Timm call our “revolutionary fish:”
#1 Leroy Bugs Brown: We got Leroy at Drew and Karamin’s wedding and flew him home from Tampa, Florida. Guess Omaha was a let-down. He eventually killed himself by jumping out of his bowl.
#2 Miles Logan Davis: Adina helped me pick Miles out. She also helped me name him, her first suggestion was, “Let’s name him after some money, how about ‘Hundred Dollar Bill?”
#3 w.nelson.mandela: On our way to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate Adina’s birthday, Phileena and I stopped at the pet shop and picked up what would become our favorite fish (let’s not tell our current OR future fish about this favoritism-thanks). I still have his baby book.
#4 Martin Luther King Jr. and #5 Malcolm X: I got these two for our 10th wedding anniversary back in 2006. Since they’re betas, they needed to be kept apart. I think Malcolm actually lived longer than Martin.
#6 Santiago: Upon our return from walking 500+ miles from southern France all the way across northern Spain, we bought a fish and named him after the town our pilgrimage ended. Santiago was a pilgrim himself, journeying from Omaha all the way across the country to Durham, North Carolina. Sadly, while at the beach, we left him on the porch of the condo we had rented and he cooked alive in the hot sun.
#7 Sebatenga Asa: We got our 7th fish on Ethiopian New Year and so I facebooked my friend Yodit to ask her how to say “Seventh Fish” in Amarigna or Amharic, the Ethiopian national language. Somehow that guy is still alive, even after driving him the long way back from North Carolina with stops in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa.
Anyway, one of my many quirks is a fascination with numbers. So as I start my 7th blog (actually, it’s sort of like my 2nd blog), I wanted to dedicate this first post to my 7th fish, Sebatenga Asa.
And since I just love prime numbers so maybe he’ll bring me good luck. I just hope he lives. And not to be irreverent, but I hope this blog actually lives longer than him…
