Holiday Party Spawns a Sad, Little Fish Story

The year is a week old and how many people have you heard say, “Well, the holidays were wonderful, of course, but I’m glad it’s over.” That saddens me, Christmas sprite that I am, but I can understand.

Mostly, the holidays were wonderful with the ancient music enriching the air in cathedrals and supermarkets, the sixth-grade pageant and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

An unfortunate thing happened at a Christmas party and I won’t tell you what town it was in, lest you figure out the identity of the hostess. Now that I live in the desert, and visit in Los Angeles and surroundings, you’ll just have to guess. (I am bi-urban, heaven help me.)

The party was one of several given in honor of a visiting guest of some luster, and each hostess was trying to make her party the finest, the glitziest, the most opulent.

One woman hit upon an idea that must have sounded wonderful when she ran it by the florist.

She decided to have tall, clear cylindrical vases, each one artlessly filled with sprays of flowers. But how would that be different from every other flower arrangement that had greeted the visiting dignitary?

“Ah,” she thought, “I will put goldfish in the vases. They will make darting streaks in gold through the crystal water and among the green stems.”

It is almost unbelievable that someone along the way didn’t say, “For heaven’s sake, there won’t be enough oxygen left in the water after the flowers go in.”

But no one did, and the hostess listened with glee as her guests were seated at tables for eight in the large dining room, each one pointing and smiling and exclaiming at the bright fish in the vases.

The awful events of the evening began at a table in a corner of the room. One fish began to flop around in the water and run into the sides of the vase. At length, he floated to the top of the water, deader than the storied mackerel.

Then it began to happen all over the room. There was scarcely any conversation. People just sat and watched the terrible passing of the fish.

This put a pall on the evening that seemed to paralyze the guests. No one did a thing until the last fish had floated to the top. One woman said, “My, it takes so long.” And so it did.

I cannot tell you why someone didn’t grab the vases and run for the swimming pool, or maybe a bath tub, or at least take the flowers out of the vases. I don’t really know what else anyone could have done except for what they did. They left early.

I don’t know what the hostess did. I think she took a long sea voyage. The evening will never be forgotten by the people who watched the finny debacle.

All right, here we go into the New Year, eyes shining, cheeks ablaze, full of hope and rectitude and those of your resolutions still unbroken after one week.

Have a wonderful 1990.