Rocky Goes Down

Our office has a storied past and the staff that work for me have a long history together. In times of stress or when they have a few minutes to relax during the course of our busy office day, the staff love to get together and remember the good old days and to share a laugh or occasionally a tear as they look back on their years together and the memories that they hold dear.

The staff in my office had a sort of communal pet once. He was not much of a pet but he was quiet and resided in the back of the office. He lived in a vase of water. He was a silent, slow moving fish named, Rocky. Rocky had bulging eyes and a hopeful, fishy demeanor and offered constant comfort to his friend, Dave. Dave is our lab technician and who raised Rocky from the time he was just a young fish. Rocky, like most fish had a retentive memory of approximately 3 seconds so in all likelihood, each time he laid eyes on his friend, Dave, Rocky considered him a new friend. To Rocky, the world outside his vase was just chock full of brand new friends every day. He must have felt very loved. He must have been....happy.

One day, Dave decided to change Rocky's water. Since Rocky swam in a vase full of water, the easiest way to get the old water out was to pour the water out of the vase before putting fresh water in. Poor, trusting Rocky. Nobody knows for sure what happened that fateful day. Rocky could have been a little too close to the rim of the vase. He could have thought he was going to get a bit of fish food so he swam slowly up to the surface before the water was to be changed. No matter what the cause, Rocky went out with the water into the office sink near the lab.

In his final moments before plunging down the sink drain, Rocky seemed to come to the realization that his most recent friend (of the past three seconds) was doing him a grave injustice. Rocky went down the drain quickly yet he seemed to look over his shoulder as he disappeared into the small, dark drainhole. As the story goes, Rocky cast one reproachful (yet panicky) eye back up at the disappearing sky and peered directly into the soul of the friend who had cared for him since birth. In a last desparate act, Rocky seemed to flick one of his pectoral fins in the air as though flipping a last fishy 'bird' at the world before descending forever. Then he was gone.

Dave was inconsolable...for about three seconds.