This crazy day began after praying and hoping I would wake up and get to school early to get the week started off well. I was proud of myself when I rolled into the school at 7:20- ten whole minutes early. Excellent for Monday morning.
I had a long mental list of things to do and was feeling like I may get them all done in the 20 minutes I had before the students arrived- and then I saw the fish tank.

King has passed. And let it suffice to say- it was very obvious very quickly that he was very dead.

Thus, a major shift in priorities as instead of making homework packets and centers, I realized I had to get rid of the body before the kids saw and were even more traumatized.

So I grabbed the bowl and ran into the teacher’s bathroom. I took the plastic plant out (ew, ew) and tried to ….pour him….. out into the toilet. The only thing that fell out was a large plastic rock.

First things first. I weighed the option of calling the custodian, but I thought by the time I explained and asked for some kind of scoop or something, too much precious time would have passed. Plus, he would have made fun of me the rest of the year.

I did notice that the water was very bubbly….he’d obviously just cleaned the toilets- the one lucky break in this story- so I rolled up my sleeve and went for it before I could change my germophobic mind.

Plumbing issue avoided. Back to the fish.

The water level in the fishbowl was too low and King sank in between the other plastic rocks. There was no way to pour him out without all the rocks falling out with him. So I did the logical thing and grabbed a handful of paper towels, put them on the floor in a heap and dumped all the remaining contents. I then attempted to cut off all synapse connections as I plucked the plastic rocks away from the discolored bit of flesh until only the fish lay stiffly on the now soaked paper towels.

With only minutes remaining, I picked up the dripping mess, dumped the fish, flushed, tried to sop up the small lake I had formed on the floor, sprayed some sort of antiseptic around the entire room, and washed my hands with as much soap as seemed reasonable given the circumstances.

I then ran back to the classroom, hid the bowl, and decided to wait until the right moment to break the news.

Only the thing is, I had two conferences today and in the sprint to prepare for those, forgot to mention it. “It” being the permanent loss of class mascot and continuous writing inspiration.

I’ll let you know if they don’t take the news so well…