BFM

Diversity Fish 02/03/2021 Michael Bonham Larson

Hi folks, it’s Christmas time again, and I am trying to figure out what to get for my new housemate, Mike, for Christmas. He has a tank full of tiny little exotic fish and one sucker fish to help with algae control. After a few months of observing this fish in action I now call it “The Suckfish” for it really sucks! I mean all day long it just hangs around, stuck to the glass. I still see algae, so I don’t think it’s doing its job. Thinking about what to give him for Christmas this year was easy, for I thought, “Maybe the suckfish is lonely and that’s why it just hangs there all day long looking forlorn and not getting the job done. I’ll get him another suckfish so his old suckfish will have company.” (I love saying suckfish!)

So here I am at the pet store that is not very smart, perusing the fish isle, trying to find a fish worker to help me. Yep, there are thousands of fish to choose from. Good luck, huh? With my history? So I look down the aisles and I see a very angry-looking older woman wearing the proper vest who was in the process of educating a customer on fish. The customer has her shopping cart full to the brim with fish stuff so I am assuming the vested lady made a whale of a sale! I walk back and forth to get her attention, which she annoyingly responds to with, “I will be right with you, sir…” I then notice another young woman who looks like she is waiting for the same lady. The young woman seems like she might work there but she is not wearing the vest so I don’t approach her.

Anyway, the annoyed, vested woman comes down the aisle after helping her customer and asks me what I want. For some reason this lady makes me very nervous and when I am in this state of mind I ramble and make stupid jokes. I think it is because she reminds me of my cranky first-grade teacher, who berated me for being stupid in math class. (“One and one equals three! No, two!” I wanted to blurt out.) I say, “Well I am looking for a suckerfish as a companion for my housemate! I mean, my housemate has a suckerfish and these tiny little exotic fish, but I have no clue what they are and I want to give his new suckerfish a companion so they will eat the algae.” She is looking at me as if I am insane and says, as she points to the fishes’ official designated sign on the outside of each fish tank, “That is not what they are called, they are called “Echen-hypostomus-eidae or something.” Her tone makes her sound like she’s saying, “If you don’t know the scientific name of the damn fish then don’t bother me about buying one.” Under my breath I say, “Well I have the correct name for you and it rhymes with suckfish…” But I digress.

She then asks me, “What does it look like?” I say, “Well…,” as I cluelessly point to one of the tanks, “It kind of looks like one of these white ones here but I cannot be sure.” She says, “Oh! You don’t want one of those! They’d muck up your tank and eat the other fish!” And I laughingly say, “Oh they are Muckfish, not Suckfish!” She doesn’t laugh. Ugh! That’s all I need, a mucked-up suckfish. So I say, “Well, how about these striped ones that look like catfish?” She then walks away from me. As she is leaving I ask one more question: “Well how about these snails here? Aren’t they good companions and eat algae?” She turns and says, “They would NOT make good fish companions plus they POOP more than they eat and it would not help!” Then she makes her escape.

So as I’m standing there looking incredulous and forlorn like the suckfish in Mike’s tank, not knowing what to do, the young lady who is still there nonchalantly says to me, “She is right.” I say, “Oh, do you work here too?” By this time I am wishing she was the one who had helped me. She says, “No, but my husband and I own six fish tanks, four snakes, three cats, (I think she said a gerbil here and there) and two turtles. Oh, and a Shiatsu.” Or is it Shitzu? (Spell check is not helping here.) Anyway, she advises against the suckerfish.

As my mind begins to explode, I say, “It should not be this hard to buy a damn fish!” I then notice behind her these amazing technicolored fish that have a black light behind them which makes them glow red, green, yellow, and purple. I say to her, “What island do these fish come from? They are beautiful!” She says, “Oh no, no island, they are engineered that way.” I say, “You mean they are manmade?” She says, “Yes, they did experiments on jellyfish years back and injected the DNA into these fish so that they would glow these bright colors.”

I say loudly, “OH! They are GMO fish!!!” She did not laugh. Right there and then I decide that Mike is getting a Visa gift certificate for Christmas.

Well a whole year has gone by and it’s Christmas time again. And I gave my housemate Mike, a Visa gift certificate as a Christmas present so he can go down to Pets r Us and buy what he wants for his Fish. A few days later, he passed me in the hallway and said he was going to use his Visa to pick up a few things for his fish friends, me not thinking much about it, said have fun fishing!

Yesterday morning I was having coffee at the breakfast table and admiring his fish tank when I started laughing out loud. Now over the years his tank has gone through an evolution of sorts. There are now many more real water plants and a complete turnover of fish. He now has six bright orange fish that are quite stunning. Plus two sucker fish and a couple rainbow minnows. (At least no one is lonely.)

As I am sitting there staring, I notice four new fish swimming by themselves in the back corner, kind of segregated from the rest. When I got closer they swam to the front of the glass, as if it was feeding time. They were coal black fish, just beautiful! Suddenly his tank became a fish bowl of diversity. I was so proud of him! I texted him at work and typed in, “BFM.” He sent back, “?” I typed in Black Fish Mater! I think he lost his cookies at that point and typed back, “I am not a fish racist!” I said you may not be but the orange ones won’t have anything to do with the Black fish. And the sucker fish just keep rounding the black fish up to the corner. I think the sucker fish were keeping the peace and I thought also eating the plants. I texted him again and said, “I think you are going to have a protest on your hands when you get home. The minnows are holding signs!” He texted back, “You are letting your imagination get the best of you! Stop texting me!”

I keep half expecting one of the fish to be floating to the top soon. This gives, “Orange is the new Black”, a whole other meaning.