donderdag 17 januari 2008

Of fish and grans


As a small kid, I always used to love the different seasonal fairs in our village.
The Spring fair at the last weekend of April and the Summer fair around July 6th were undoubtedly my most favourite moments. I may never have gotten that much money to spend at the attractions, but it was more than enough to tend to my needs as a child.
I used to try them all at least once for as far as my budget would allow it, except for the shooting stand and the one with the bumper-cars. The shooting stand, I always found too violent and with my bad eyes, I wouldn't be hitting anything and, as for the bumper-cars … well, they an under ten in those days wasn't allowed to drive yet, so I had to wait, but it wouldn't be long anymore, only a few years, before I'd be zooming around on that smooth surface with my foot on the pedal and my back firmly fixed in the seat. I guess it's a fact that Theo's fixation clearly is genetic if you look at how I was looking forward to driving those things.
But "Be prepared" was the motto. Any older teenager could be coming out of a dead angle at high speed to push his nose in your side or up your rear with his car.
It always felt like being struck by a shark-attack. Suddenly, swiftly, smoothly and quite often at the very climax of the attack, the microsecond just before impact, to my horror, I would see those older teenagers close in on my left side, as I was driving peacefully along the outskirts of the driving surface. Their face would be gruesomely concentrated, their body firmly fixed with tightened muscles and the arms would deliver extra power to clutch the steering wheel and concentrate on impact. Everything would get in position, ready to give their car the extra push to practically bump me out of the attraction. The more they would close in on my car, the more wicked you could see their smiles become, only to open blissfully with laughter after having been shaken after impact as proof of the successful impact that had been delivered upon my cart.
When I would be repositioning my glasses, yet again, I knew I had been had once more.
It would take me another two years and another six fairs before I had grown into it and had perfected my style. Ever since I was thirteen, I started to give the older macho guys a hell of a time in trying to attack me, cleverly turning away at the emphatic moment, to sometimes see those older and more hormonally infected teenagers hit the side of the stand with their vehicle, whilst casting looks in sheer disbelief that they had missed out on me, or you could see them curse at me after experiencing that the major impact they had been banking on only seemed limited to a soft scrape at the rubber bars that would let the power of the impact peacefully die down. I sometimes succeeded in timing my evasive action so neatly that in the end they ended up bumping into the wrong people. Consequently, usually a little play of avengeance ensued, between the two or three cars with older guys, of which I often luckily was able to stay out. I tried not to grin too hard, but I enjoyed avoiding the crash-packs, zooming past with the wind flying through my curls …
Ah! Those were the days! I suppose it did inspire me to try and drive as defensively as possible now that I have my own car.
I was thirteen at the time and clearly growing up with my hormones enjoying the primitive feelings that bumper car provoked. Those hormones probably meant they were about to get the better of my childhood.. The weird thing was that at that age I was already being reminiscent of those days at the fishing stand.
Five years earlier you could win live goldfish as a prize as well, if you had fished out enough points from the pond.
So I guess I must have been eight years or something when I had fished my first goldfish. You paid the landlady for a stick, you hooked up a few plastic fish onto it as a result of your patient catch, which generally took 45 seconds per plastic duck or per fish and when the points at their bottoms added up to the right amount, you could take a live goldfish home.
I guess I did that twice, of which one delivered quite a memorable moment.
The little shiny plastic bag went in my hand and I went off home. The little tiny goldfish, suddenly in a very limited space would make a few quick moves, and I did manage to spill some water along the way. I'd never been a handyman and, alas, handy I still am rather not.
But I got my fish home safely.
But now what?
The sheer ignorance at keeping fish , would give me some uncertain feeling.
Where would I put that in?
Mum helped me out with our salad bowl. If I would be able to keep it for a few days, she even might be considering buying an aquarium, but I guess it never was a straight promise.
For some reason, my mother never made straight promises. I now could wonder why she never did, but perhaps her situation in her house was a reason not to do so, with herself being locked in in a stalemate between the demands of both her husband and her mother who was living in.
Anyway, the little animal was dropped into the bowl with nothing but water and it seemingly swam around quite happily. The calm and peace of the goldfish, its slow moves to gracefully move around in its new environment, I found it all quite relaxing, even at my early age of eight years. I quickly grew to like this animal that seemed the embodiment of calm and the complete picture had a certain Zen about it all.
But now our family had a fish. Now what?
How do you look after it?
Feeding a fish seemed to be a mystery. When does a fish require food? What does a fish eat? We generally eat the fish, so it was usually the other way around.
The first morning after the funfair, we decided to give it some breadcrumbs and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that the bowl seemed so filled with breadcrumbs, you might as well have put the bowl on the fire, stewed it and eaten the whole lot.
My grandma, who was about to turn 84 and who always could be quite anal about keeping the house neat and tidy, was living with us. She clearly noticed that some things in that bowl weren't like they were supposed to be. Gran was always cleaning everything, everytime, everywhere, so now seemed a good time to have a go at that goldfish-salad-bowl.
Her first problem was how to ever get that fish into something else. She decided to take a cup, and hunt for the fish by hand.
Was it her old age or her eyes, I do not know, but after an intense chase of about fifteen minutes with the cup whisking up the water like a big tractor on a tiny patch of land, she came to the conclusion that this tiny fish was a bit too fast for her and she tried to think of something else. Another reason to call off this way of hunting was that the shelf the bowl was on, was getting all wet. And cleaning a salad bowl was alright, but having to mop up the whole kitchen would be a little too far fetched for the effort, even for my gran, who reckoned that the kitchen needed a wet mop everyday to keep clean. But perhaps even that was a bit too much over the top for her if she would be doing this in the afternoon.
Wait a minute! How do you usually get fish out of a fryingpan?
With a skimmer!

Brilliant idea!

Grandma went over to the drawers next to the cooker and took out the largest skimmer we had. She prudently drowned the skimmer in the bowl and had it lying in wait until the goldfish would swim over it.
Alas, her patient tactics of slowly raising the skimmer seemed just as pointless. For some reason, this little fish was quite smart: he just kept on escaping.
Grandma was about to get mad. She never really had been the most patient of persons.
Another infuriated effort of drowning the skimmer followed and with a quick move hoisting it out of the water, she made herself look like a hunting bear catching a fish out of an Alaskan cold river. The power of the paw, the quick and short gracious move of the catch. It all had a certain poetry as I sat worriedly watching the whole of her efforts.
The skimmer was raised with one quick flashing move and grandma had triumphed.
The fish was out of the bowl on the skimmer only to temporarily transform itself into a red tit, to then land on the green tiles of the kitchen floor with a big fat *SPLAT*, nervously desperately fighting to take to the air again with its wings now back to fins again.
Who ever said fish couldn't fly? For a moment that goldfish clearly did.
I was as quick as to pick up the fish and place it into the cup with water where it slowly calmed down only half realizing what it had endured.
Grandma was swearing and cursing in her anger about the floor that had been wetted.
My brother mutedly chuckled after secretly having watched the entire scene over a book and he hadn't read a single page since he had seen gran walk up to the bowl.
A few days later, the morning after yet another cleansing operation by my grandmother, my fish, my little pet, that I had been so proud of in winning and to which I had developed at least some emotional attachment was floating just under the surface. Apparently my gran was just too much for the little animal to handle.
I cried my heart out, with big warm tears rolling down my cheeks. Comforted by my gran with shouts that I had better stop soon, because she needed the bowl for the lettuce mother had just bought.
She handed me the dead orange body by the tail and told me to get rid of it.
I stood in the kitchen, sniffing up the last of my tears. The last of the water on the fish was dripping yet again onto the floor of our kitchen. Grandmother went off to fetch her mop again.
I had just come down from my bath. I wanted to bury the fish in the garden, but mother would be mad again if I was to dirty my hands again.
I went up to the front garden. I moved some of our pebbles aside and put the fish in there to rest. I took a last pathetic burst to get the last of the tears out, blew my nose and went in again.
Mother was waiting for me.
What had I done with that fish? In between the pebbles, frontgarden ...
"What?? Get it out of there before it starts to smell!"
I felt so unhappy having to do a post-mortem, I slowly walked out the backdoor in mourning. I went past the driveway only to see nextdoor's grey tiger cat digging in our pebbles and then run off ever so quickly. Wasn't there something orange in between its jaws?

I went back inside thinking this world was ever so cruel!
I had a difficult few days after that. The death of my goldfish meant my first experience with a feeling of bereavement. And at the early age of eight, I thought it was quite something to bear.

Sadly, people just can't grow up without any frustrations ...