Memory Lane Sunday of the Month....

In January of 1999, after my first year at BYU, I moved into a town house just south of campus. It had it all: my own room, green vinyl sofas, walls that weren’t white, a red kitchen with a black and white floor, laundry facilities that were inside the condo, and a fish.

Who lived in a gumball machine aquarium the size of a large cantaloupe.

The fish’s name was New Anus. Yes, I’m serious. (No, I did not name the fish.) Here’s a little background… There had been a girl living in this condo who had moved out the Christmas before I moved in. Her name was Nikki. And she was the owner (and the namer) of New Anus.

And so, the story goes something like this…. The Christmas before this (1997), Nikki had gone home for the holidays. At this time, she had two feeder gold fish in the tank. One fish was named I.C. and the other one was named Uranus. (Don’t ask... there is an OBVIOUS theme.) Anyway, knowing she was going to be out of town, she asked a couple of guys in the ward if they would feed the fish. They told her they would, and with that, everyone enjoyed the holidays.

Until Nikki got home.

Apparently, something went horribly wrong while she was away. Either the guys forgot to feed the fish or some other tragic event happened, because when Nikki returned, she found the fish dead.

So, in an attempt not to let the gumball fish aquarium go to waste, she went out and bought more fish. She bought 2 feeder goldfish, one she named New Anus and one she named More Anus and she also bought about 8 other fish.

By the time I moved in a year later, there was only one fish in the tank. New Anus. That’s because… now get your seat belts on…. New Anus ATE More Anus and all the other 8 fish!! True story.

So a year and a half later, (April 2000) it came time for some of us to graduate and some of us to say good bye to South Downs #2 and move on. The big question at that cross roads in our lives was, “What are we going to do with the fish?”

Andrea decided to take it with her to Las Vegas. The only other option was to flush it down the toilet. Ok, maybe that wasn’t the ONLY other option, but so what if it was my suggestion. When Andrea moved into her condo, the fish was left behind at her parent’s house. Her parents have a pond in their backyard and were able to give New Anus a larger, more luxurious home.

I bet New Anus loved having more space to swim around in (even though I’m pretty sure that goldfish only have a 3 second memory span, so the fish would forget he was living in a tank the size of a large cantaloupe). And because they moved her from the gumball machine to the pond, she grew larger. And larger. And still larger. Until she was 9 inches long. (During her gumball days she was about 2 inches long.)

And then, on July 24, 2006, tragedy struck and New Anus was laid to rest. Andrea’s dad had come home from work to find the fish in the pond stuck between 2 rocks. It appeared as though the fish was trying to free itself, but to no avail.

Who knew a feeder goldfish could live 9 years.

Maybe it’s better it has gone to a better place. I’m just sayin. I mean with her cannibalistic history, and her exponential growth in size, who knows, she may have tried to eat Andreas parents....