He Just Can't Look At Them The Same Way

While we were away on our South American adventure last month, we decided to leave our fish in the care of my brother. Since my brother's vacation overlapped with part of our vacation, the plan was that my hubby was going to drop a special self-feeder in the tank that would automatically feed them for 3 days (gotta love technology), and then my bro would take over from there.

There was only one problem with the full-proof plan...while we were scrambling to finish our packing and catch our ride to the airport, my hubby forgot to drop the self-feeder in the tank.

Three days later, my brother came back from vacation and straight to the fishies rescue. Before I had a chance to check in with my brother to see how they were doing, I got the following e-mail from my mom:

[Brother's] home. Fed the fish. They are OK if you have 2 of them.

Ummm...we have 3. Was she trying to be funny? I couldn't tell (it's times like these I wish e-mail had inflections or some sign of tone).

It turned out that when my brother went to feed our fish, and he only saw 2 of them, as in, only 2. The third fish, our dear pac-man (I know, strange name, but my hubby named him--and he was yellow and ate a lot so it kinda made sense), was nowhere to be found...at all.

Here I was having a fabulous time on vacation with the hubby, when I was faced with the difficult task of having to find a way to break the news to my hubby that his beloved pac-man was missing.

I decided I would keep the news to myself until it was official (my brother promised to check the tank again to make sure he wasn't hiding). Then, it was official.

At first, I asked my brother if he could go to the pet store to get a fish that looked like pac-man. I thought it was a brilliant idea. My hubby would never know...and his heart wouldn't be broken by the bad news. My brother felt otherwise (he never watched as many sit-coms as I did). There would be no replacement fish.

Eventually my hubby learned the bad news, and he was convinced that the 2 surviving fish had eaten the third fish. Then I lied. I told him that that couldn't be true because my brother had given pac-man a proper burial.

My husband didn't believe me.

The saddest part is that ever since pac-man went missing, my hubby just hasn't been able to look at the other fish the same way.