Fish in my Bathtub

The events of today culminated in Brandon tossing a bag of dead goldfish into our trash can outside.

Eight goldfish to be exact.

But let me back up here. I'm getting ahead of myself.

You see, I thought when I went out to our local cloth market today that the only thing I'd be returning home with would be some material to make a few things for the kids. I guess I forgot where I live. Allow me to let you in on a little secret about Big Chicken living:

Things are never as they seem.

This token rule applies in most cases. I could exaggerate upon this point all day long, but for now, I won't go down that road.

The rule still applied today at the cloth market. I bought several yards of fabric from the same lady that I usually buy from. She tallied up my total with her little calculator that speaks to her in Chinese and I paid my insanely cheap amount for some way cute fabric.

Then she pulls a bucket out from underneath the counter and says, "My husband likes to fish!" She points in the bucket toward a bunch of large shiny goldfish that he'd caught at the local lake and asks if I'd like to take one home. I insist that I truly don't need a goldfish today.

She keeps asking... "Do you have a bathtub to put it in?"

Me: "Yes. wait. What? A bathtub? No. no. We use our bathtub. I can't put a fish in our bathtub."

Her daughter (laughing)... "No. Not a bathtub. A fish bowl. Do you have a fish bowl?"

Darn those Chinese language tones. They get me every time. Bathtub and fishbowl are the same word, but toss in a few different intonations here and there and you might have yourself a goldfish in your Whirlpool.

I concede. "Ok. ok. Yes I'll take home a fish for the kids to see."

That's when the daughter pulls out 2 plastic sacks, double layers them, and my fabric lady starts pulling goldfish out of the bucket with her bare hands like she's Bear Grylls. 

One. Two.

"Ok that's plenty."

Three.Four.Five.

"No really. That's enough."

And then she dumps the last three in...Six.Seven.Eight. She pours some water in with them since they're fish (after all), hooks the sack over my handle bar and says, "Good. Just like this!"

The fish slished and sloshed the whole way home. At a stop light the guy next to me informed me that there wasn't enough water in there and that they'd all die.
Note to self: Learn how to say, "you think so, eh?!?!" in Chinese.

Lo and behold, he was right.
The kids enjoyed them for about 2 hours before three went belly up. They were too big to flush down the toilet so we did the next best thing. Bagged them back up, and took them to the trash can outside.

And that's the story of how things are never as they seem, even at the cloth market.