The other day, when my mom forgot the names of the friends I’ve had since middle school again, she told me she “had the memory of a goldfish.” And I think that’s a really strange excuse because I know she doesn’t — she has the memory of a middle-aged white woman. But I, on the other hand, do have the memory of a goldfish. In a strange ocean accident where I swallowed an entire underwater ecosystem at the age of nine while I was just trying to blow bubbles, I somehow managed to acquire the knowledge of one tiny goldfish, Marty. And his memory is devastating. 

On November 18, 2014, his whole world was turned upside-down. Marty was an average fish; he worked at a travel agency and dealt plankton on the side to make ends meet. He had a wife and 1000 kids; they all played Go Fish together on Sunday evenings. His home was adorned with fancy eggs and it had these beautiful seaweed curtains on the windows. He had everything that a suburban fish could wish for — white-picket fence and all. And, much like Job, he lost everything. On that fateful day, he was attending the reef’s fishtivities, celebrating a year of being kelp-neutral. He was handing out pamphlets about his new volunteer club that informed people about the dangers of nets. Then, Marty saw it. The big blue bubble. This bubble was 90 goldfish wide and 200 tall. It had a deep, menacing voice which commanded absolute attention. The bubble said, “I think I’m going to pee here.” Marty didn’t understand that foreign language. Suddenly, the whole ocean turned bright yellow and a monsoon overtook the reef. Many fish tried to swim away, mothers clasped onto their children, husbands onto their new cars, but the current dragged them up into the bubble, into the mouth of death. It was cataclysmic. Suddenly, Marty was dragged into the abyss. Before he went, the last phrase that left his mouth was “my reeeeef.”

He spent three days in a coma. When he awoke, he was laying in a bowl, the twa-let bowl. When a big, burly man came in to take a dump, he knew he couldn’t escape. He died in that bowl, buried by feces, and then flushed back into the ocean.