Goldfish

One day at work, several students come up to my desk and said that someone had left a bag of goldfish out in the hall. A little taken back, but not surprised, because I work in a High School, I said, I'll take them. Later on that day the "owner" came to claim his fishes. His reason for leaving them in the hall is a long story. Just understand, he's in high school and teenage boy. Before he left, I asked if I could have one of his fish. So that is how I got the goldfish.

I decided to have a contest to name this fish, asking the students to submit names. Being high school students, I couldn't get an appropriate name for this poor little fish.
Curious students would come up and ask, "What's the fish's name?" and I'd say, "Don't know".
So, I ended the contest and named the fish, Donknow.


Over Thanksgiving break, I took Donknow home with me. I was getting ready to go back to work and I looked in the bowl and he was at the bottom, dead.
Sadly, I told everyone at school that the fish died.

I didn't have time to dispose of him, right away. But the next day, I saw him swimming around really fast in circles. He was alive!
Now, how was I going to tell the students he was alive?
Well, he didn't go back to school.

Today, he lives with us, at the kitchen counter.

Come with me to a third grade classroom.....

There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet.

He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.

The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, 'Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat.' He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered.

As the teacher is walking toward him, a class mate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.

The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, 'Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!' Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy.

The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful.

But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie. She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. You've done enough, you klutz!'

Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, 'You did that on purpose, didn't you?' Susie whispers back, 'I wet my pants once too.'

Who is the Susie in your life?

~~~~~~Y~~~~~~

~Tidbit~

Although records of the domestication of the goldfish date back over 1,000 years, it was during the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1643 A.D.) that goldfish became so popular that they were taken from their natural pools and maintained indoors in the beautiful pottery bowls of this period.