I was looking for some old photos on my computer when I stumbled across this gem from my freshman year of college. As is dormitory law, we had our white board (or in our rebel case, silver board) on the outside of our door to both post messages and have more obscene messages and drawings done by others.
Being sure to follow the traditions of those who trashed the halls before us, we codified our status as roommates (which only ended up lasting about three weeks, but that’s another story) by going to the local Wal-Mart together and purchasing, among other things, a few fish.
Now, we’re dealing with a store where you can buy clothes, televisions, and paintball guns, all while you get your oil changed….so to say they are experts in fish would laughable at best. But I think the first clue that sea life from a big box is less than marginal would be the fact that it literally has a shelf life! We stood in front of a wall of tanks looking at varieties of fish and ruling out options based on the number of dead floaters in the tank.
Still, we picked out what we hoped were the best available stock and went on our way.
The bus ride to and from Wal-Mart with a bag of fish became a frequent one, because as the white board says, “We had 2, then 1, then 4, then 3…” and it continued that way for a few weeks until we finally gave up.
Looking back on the situation, it’s probably best those fish died so soon. Since things didn’t really work out with my first roommate it could have gotten ugly over those guys. I hear fish custody battles between ex roommates can be quite costly.
Regardless, it’s Monday, and if you’re pissed off at something at least it’s not the fact you have shitty Wal-Mart fish for pets, and they’re not constantly dying on you. Unless you do have Wal-Mart fish that keep dying on you, in which case I hope you learned your lesson.