The Fish

So here's a picture of the infamous fish tank.  What started as almost a joke, has now grown to tens of gallons of water, and 12 fish that now live in my room.

It all started with a joke: I was going to get all of my advisees goldfish for Christmas.  So I schlepped down to Wal-Mart and got 13 goldfish--one extra just in case something happened.  I did everything the little girl told me to do, woke up the next morning, all but one was dead.  Dead!

I went in that day and decided just to tell them what happened... that they had no real Christmas present because I couldn't keep 12 goldfish alive for less than 10 hours.  Sheesh.

Well, of course, they were awesome.  In fact, Nick M. suggested that when we got back we should all go and get our own fish.  Sounded like a fabulous idea.

Here we are, two tanks later.  The fish have taken over the room--they draw much more of a crowd than anything I can teach does.  All of the fish as of this afternoon were still alive (that is largely because I've already bought the "Matthew" fish again--the first one kicked the bucket after only 3 days) -- and we've lost Nick B.'s frog.  :(

So yeah, I'm now fish central.  Kids will interrupt the explanation of a math problem to ask me questions about the fish.  "Do you know when you have to clean it?" "Have any of them died yet?" "Which one is Crispin's?" "Why can't you find Nick's fish?"  "Why does he like to hide all of the time?"  

If only they'd get this fired up about equations.