**Guest Post** I’m Gonna Hug ‘Em and Squeeze ‘Em and Love ‘Em and… Oops.

In honor of her recent birthday (and partly because of my current writer's block), I've asked Blondie to write a guest post here.  Since we spent so much time together, I think it's fun to view our shared memories through her lens.  Read on and see what I mean.

 

**Freshman year at a university of 40,000 students can be quite isolating when you spend it the way Dia and I did.  That’s to say sitting in our dorm room downing Lipton Iced Tea and Easy Mac while watching Jeopardy! and our favorite CW shows (Gilmore Girls, you’ll always have a spot in my heart).  Our aversion to interacting with our so-called peers wasn’t so much a lack of interest in making new friends, but more so a lack of interest in stooping to such degrading levels.  Unlike our freshmen classmates, we neither wanted to wake up in a bush sans shoes and wallet, nor party on Frat Row which was pretty much around the corner.  We preferred to keep our integrity, even if it meant we practically lived like hermits.  

But that didn’t mean we weren’t lonely.  More than anything we both wanted to be home with our friends and loved ones.  And we spent A LOT of time talking to those people on the phone and making weekend retreats to places of familiarity.  Being far from home and only in the beginning stages of our roomie-ness meant there were holes.  Which needed to be filled.  By pets.  Like fish.

Pets weren’t allowed in the dorms except for one small fish tank.  And you can be damn sure we jumped at that opportunity.  My dad has always had fish tanks, so I was pretty familiar with the necessary details.  It wasn’t long before we were at PetCo deciding which lucky candidates would fill our needs for companionship.  

And so we returned to our dorm with a one gallon fish tank and a few tetras to call it home.  The initial setup was a little shaky (the bigger the tank the easier it is to get the water right I now know) but before we knew it we were in business and the proud parents of a small tetra school.  Things were perfect until winter decided to rear its head before the housing people decided to turn the heat on.  Fearing our little fishies would freeze to death, I quickly went to buy the smallest fish tank heater I could find.  After following the directions precisely, I felt pretty good about my installation of the heater and went to bed for the night.

When we woke up the next morning, we both knew something was wrong.  I went over to check on the fish but couldn’t find any of them.  I watched waiting for them to emerge from the Tiki head we bought for decoration, but there were no signs of life.  Once we couldn’t take it anymore, I decided it was time to go in.  I unplugged the cords, took off the lid, and reached in for the Tiki head.  It reached the surface followed by three faint ploop, ploop, ploops, as our poor fishes escaped their watery grave.

We consulted the fish man at Petco who suspected electrocution or overheating, but could only offer to test the water from our tank and make sure that wasn’t the problem.  He did what he could to calm the obviously distraught teenage girls before him.

Needless to say we were more than a little damaged by our inability to be loved by fish.**


A few comments.  1) Gilmore Girls was forced on me and I learned to love it.  Of course, this happened after the series ended, so I was left hanging.  Awesome. 2) We had a few different species of fish within the tetra family.  Mine was neon.  Naturally. 3) I'm going to go with electrocution.  Because that would happen to us.  Thankfully, we finally managed to acquire some fish who actually lived through being owned by us.  Thank God.