"Mrs. Aho, can I have a sleep over at your house, and clean your fish tank? The filter isn't working right and I feel really sorry for your fish."
Uhhhhhh. OK. As anyone who knows us well knows, we have a single fish in our gigantic fish tank, whom we've affectionately dubbed "Survivor". Because, well... he's the last one, and has been for probably over 7 years. No matter what the state of that fish tank, he just.keeps.living. For years he was merely called "the fish", but he's survived for so long now, we thought we really should at least give him a name. Thus "Survivor". I've realized only recently how truly remarkable this thing is. Like a Superhero among goldfish, surviving so long in such adverse conditions. I haven't done a full-on cleaning of his tank in a LONG time because I couldn't get the vacuum thing-y to work. Which is a lame excuse, and really no excuse at all. Mea culpa. Reagardless. That's the back story.
Return to last Friday, when I arrived home from work at 9 pm to find the tank empty, a disco light set up near the fish tank, and Survivor in a pitcher on the coffee table. Apparently, this friend had returned for a sleepover, and kept his word about cleaning my tank. He told my husband "I had written out an estimate on how long it would take me to finish the job. I was off by a factor of 10." HA. That's about right.
While my boys hung out in the basement doing absolutely nothing productive, as they typically do on Friday nights (and most nights in general), their friend worked diligently for HOURS. And then, the next morning, he got up early and spent MORE HOURS emptying years worth of sludge, rinsing off rocks, fixing the filtering system, finding all the lost heaters (three of them! I'd wondered where they went!), and then tank-scaping with the utmost care. I'm not entirely sure he even really hung out with the boys at all, he was so busy with his task. He then refilled the tank with clean water, set it to heating, and gave me very specific instructions on how to re-introduce Survivor to his new, pristine mansion. I told him that he probably should've left some sludge in the bottom, just so it wouldn't be such a shock to Survivor's system. A clean tank might be the only thing that COULD kill that fish.
So far, though... Survivor is thriving. Except for one eye that is bulging because it must've gotten injured at some time during the move, but hopefully that will improve with time.
And Rob and I both agree... this kid can come over again ANY TIME. Rob has dubbed him "the parentally-designated new best friend". Let's hope his industry rubs off on the Aho boys. I should show him my closet next time....
