Daisy and John - A Love Story

Today after church we went to the local Meijer and, among other things, we bought Keisha two comet goldfish. She named the orange one, which was bigger, Daisy. The silver and smaller one she named John. They were only $0.17 apiece, which is a really good deal. The associate pumped some air into the water in the bag. I asked her how long they would last in the bag. About three hours was the reply:

We were waiting for some pictures we had sent off for development to arrive. That, actually, was the reason we went to the Meijer. We bought the fish and some other stuff and went to the Perkin's across the street to get some lunch. Keisha made sure to bring Daisy and John with her. After eating lunch, we returned to Meijer so that I could pick up our pictures.

But Meijer is a store that always seems to suck you in. Sure, you go in for one thing, but you always wind up coming out with something more. For me, it was the two cases of Cherry Coke. The entire transaction - the pictures and the pop - took much longer than we had anticipated.

By the time I came back to our car, Keisha had fallen asleep, and Jennie was holding the bag with the fish in it in front of our air conditioner vent. We drove home, and I immediately got things set up for the fish to get to their new home. The only thing about it was that Daisy had stopped moving. I followed the instructions about letting them get acclimated to the water temperature, yet we saw no movement from Daisy.

After the suggested acclimation time, I used the fish net and transferred both Daisy and John to their fish bowl. No movement from Daisy still. Then, John stopped moving, too. Or did he? We took Daisy out of the bowl and led her to the bathroom for a burial ceremony.

Keisha, Jennie, my mom, and I were in the bathroom. I asked Keisha if she'd like to say a few words. She said, "Bye, Daisy, I'll miss you. Have a good trip!" Then I flushed her down the toilet.

We returned to Keisha's room and saw that John wasn't moving. We decided to wait until dinner time to make the decision whether to pronounce him dead or not.

Skip ahead several hours... I was working on the roof this afternoon, and Keisha came out to say, "Daddy, John is still not moving!"

"Okay," I said, "we'll take care of it when I get down."

I came down from the roof and went with Keisha to her room. Fish net in hand, I scooped the dead John from the fish bowl and led him to the bathroom. I asked Keisha again if she had any words. She said, "Bye, John! See you later!"

I overheard my mom utter the following:

John is heading for the "john"
Big, bad John
Big, bad, no more

So, we may be heading back to the pet store to get a couple more comet goldfish yet tonight.