Even in death, we have the assurance of new life, growth, and restoration.

I bought two fish yesterday and named them Chuck and Blair, after my favorite television show. Poor little guys were quite shaken up from being removed from the giant tank with the fake rock stickers, but seemed to be adjusting just fine in their new home. We put them in the living room, gave them some real rocks, and fed them a good home cooked meal. Needless to say, these fish were going to be well taken care of. Matter of fact, we even rapped them some 2Chainz hummed them a tune before bed.

I woke up this morning so excited to greet the new lives in our home. What adventures we’ll have! Oh the places we will go! Horror of horrors, as I rounded the corner to where the dumplings had been swimming merely hours before, I saw them. I saw them laying there. I saw them laying on the bottom of the tank, floating sideways and lifeless. Both of them. “What has happened?!” I proclaimed to all who were awake at 8:00am. I assume that there are a few possible explanations for their deaths.

Scenario 1: One was Romeo, and one was Juliet.

The black fish (whom we had named Chuck) blended so well into the black rocks we had furnished their living space with that poor Blair/Juliet, the orange fish, assumed we had taken her one true love away from her, and had died of heartbreak. When Chuck/Romeo emerged from his unintended hiding spot in the rocks, he killed himself after seeing his one true love floating lifeless.

Scenario 2: The two fish, having lived probably a few weeks at the Walmart, had experienced a minimally dysfunctional lifestyle at the hands of Walmart customers. Being put in a plastic bag was bad enough, but when they had to listen to two college kids rap Birthday Song over and over in the car, they were on the edge of killing themselves. When they then had to watch pitch perfect and witness others eating Funfetti cupcakes without sharing with them, it thrust them over the edge into a deep depression.

Scenario 3: They were faking death in order to devise a Finding Nemo like plan to somehow be whisked away via toilet pipeline to the open sea. They would be the first ones in their family to go so far in life, and all they wanted was to make Eleanor and Cyrus proud.

Scenario 4: Molly fish require fish tank heaters, and their water should be about 80 degrees. The Walmart fish man never told us.

This post is dedicated to the lives and accomplishments of Charles B. Bass and Blair C. Waldorf Bass. May their lives be a reminder that we should always google things before we take lives into our own hands.