Naval Funeral
My friends Tippy and Toppy had the fabled attention span of goldfish. Whenever I made eye contact with them, they’d meet my gaze for just a few seconds and then they’d turn away – as if they had bigger fish to fry.
But they were dearly beloved friends and always there for me – until that fateful day when I offered them a cigarette. Sadly the tobacco I crumpled into their bowl apparently poisoned them and they went belly up.
My father said we’d give them a naval funeral, and when we flushed them down the toilet, I shed some heartfelt, six-year-old tears.
RetroFlash / 100 Words
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Dana Susan LehrmanThis retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com
Tags:
Goldfish, Humor
Sweet story, Dana. You were only 6. And your gold fish really did have short attentions spans.
Thanx Betsy!
I remember many such funerals for my kids’ goldfish. I don’t remember my parents letting me have one, but perhaps I have suppressed the trauma of a burial at sea.
Yes Laurie those toilet funerals were traumatic indeed!
Cute take on the prompt, Dana. We buried our dead goldfish in the back yard. I don’t know if I could have watched them go swirling down the toilet bowl.
Thanx Suzy, at my tender age I may have thought they would go straight to a lovely, clean ocean!
Loved this Retroflash, and the naval funeral concept—made me smile. Hope your tears were at the loss of the fishy friend, and not the indignity of the naval toilet.
For my fishy friends of course Khati!
And as my father proposed it and officiated, I surely thought it a very dignified naval toilet indeed!