I recall a time years ago when my mother remarked about someone who wasted his time just gazing into a fish tank, talking to the fish. It wasn’t a comment of admiration. Enter Chub Chub.

My son’s university biology class offered its goldfish to whichever college students wanted them. At Easter, he brought his college-educated fish home until such time as he can offer it more luxurious accommodations than a cramped dorm room.

Little Chub Chub was apparently highly influenced by his initial surroundings. He doesn’t seem content to just swim around as I would think fish the wide world over do. Perhaps he grew used to the noise and conversation of a college class or the activity of a dorm room, because whenever someone enters the room, he rushes over to the front of the fish bowl, looks like he’s reciting Ronald Reagan’s “Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate” with great gusto, and dances up a storm. I can’t believe I’m saying this. Yes, I’ve begun talking to the fish. Honestly, it seems rude not to.

I happened to mention it to my mother the other day, knowing what was coming. Even though she is currently laid up with a compression fracture, even though she very recently lost her husband of 64 years, even though there is not much joy in Mudville just now, she managed to convey a degree of disdain and long-suffering that held in it a number of the unspoken thoughts of someone who, frankly, has a right at this point in life to have. She’s right, of course. But . . .

Oh Chub Chub. If only you weren’t so highly animated I could ignore you. However, on one point, let me be clear. No matter how much I admired Reagan, I will not “tear down this wall”. After all, conversation between species notwithstanding, there are some lines that cannot be crossed.

Image: By Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; reference: Casey At The Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer; reference: Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin by Ronald Reagan, June 12, 1987.