By ALEKHYA RAJASEKARAN
Staff Writer
I walked out of my room one morning and saw the bloodbath in front of me. Bodies were lying face up, their bulging eyes seemingly staring into my soul.
When I was in 6th grade and my parents gave me the responsibility of taking care of our 30-gallon fish tank since I begged them to let me buy some fish. About a week later I ended up killing all of them somehow. As an emotional ten-year-old, I felt guilty about sending these healthy fish into the fish equivalent of Heaven and felt tears welling up in my eyes. My dad saw the corpses lying in front of me, floating in the tank, and immediately knew what to say.
“They’re just sleeping!”
My dad, pressured by deciding between whether to tell me exactly what happened or somehow make me stop crying, decided that ignorance was bliss in this case, and tried to convince me that nothing bad had happened. I however was smarter than his foolish ploys to get me to dismiss my dreadful actions. I started to do my research and poured over online websites to figure out what exactly I did wrong. However, not only did I end up figuring out that the water levels were not optimal, I surprisingly discovered a new passion: Home Aquariums. Ever since that frightful (and scarring) event I’ve learnt from my mistakes and proudly host a variety of fish in that same fish tank over the years. Even though I haven’t let another single fish die since I was ten, this story is still one that I look upon with not only horror but a moment from which I have grown indefinitely. It’s a story – and a hobby – that I don’t discuss often, but is always a moment that has shaped me in the most fundamental way.