trauma.

I had quite a traumatic experience this past weekend. First, a warning to some readers: you may not find this traumatic whatsoever, you may simply roll your eyes. To you, you couldn't possibly understand until it is you.

I have five fish. Two of them are larger fish, Burt and Ernie, and three smaller, very bright fish, Schoober, JuJu, and Thomas. These five fish have been my companions in my single, one bedroom apartment. They are the ones I greet when I come home from work, they're the ones I say goodbye to when leaving. I talk to them as if they could understand a word that I said (and yes, I still believe they can).

Anyways, on to the traumatic experience...

Kyle and I took Saturday evening to clean the fish tank, the home of my sweet companions. After a trip to Petco, which I thought would consist of me walking in, getting new filter cartridges, paying and walking out, it instead consisted of me walking in, searching for the appropriate Petco name brand filter cartridges, asking an employee when I could find them, and the employee telling me they don't actually sell replacement cartridges. So, in other words, Petco puts their name on this fish tank that comes with a filter, but they personally do not sell the exact replacement filters for their own brand. Yeah, makes a whole lot of sense. So, after spending money on a brand new filter and replacements for that filter, my night had already taken a turn for the worse. But wait, that isn't the traumatic part.

I was assigned to the job of transferring the little fishies from the dirty tank to a pot filled with water. I had four of the five fish into the pot, and little Thomas was doing everything he could to avoid being caught. Now, in order to fully understand this, it is important to understand just how small Thomas is. He is tiny, probably one of the smallest fish I have seen. Anyways, while trying to capture him, I accidentally killed him. I do not want to go into details but it was the very first time that I actually felt truly responsible for the death of something. It was horrible.

You think that's the end, right? I wish...

I go to check on the four remaining fish, and my other two little ones, Schoober and JuJu are dead. I forgot to put the necessary drops into the water that clear it of any harmful things to the fish, that and I think the water was a little warm.

So now, I'm left with just Burt and Ernie and a brand new filter. I'm not really sure why I got so upset over silly little fish, but I think it had something to do with the companionship. They were my little babies.

I'm in mourning and I don't like it.