Can a fish rise from the dead? Aaron has seen it happen. In the Season 7 premiere of 7 Minute Stories, a family aquarium, a fish named Poop, and one unforgettable mystery become a strange and surprisingly moving story about life, death, and second chances.
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The Team:
Story Created & Performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional Vocals: Cori Calafato
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
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TRANSCRIPT
Can a fish rise from the dead?
Not only do I think one can, I’ve seen a fish do it. I’ll tell you all about it in just a few moments.
You’re listening to 7 Minute Stories. This is Season 7.
I’ve been sitting on this story for a while because I’m still wrapping my mind around it.
Years ago, the kids wanted a pet. You know how it goes if you’re a parent, or if you know someone who is.
“Can we have a pet?”
Then you go through the possibilities. If you’re a dog person, you’re a dog person. If you’re a cat person, you’re a cat person. If you’re out there doing other stuff, you’re doing other stuff.
Cori and I don’t do that stuff with dogs and cats and other things, so we landed on this idea: Let’s get a fish for each kid.
We went to the pet store, and I started talking to the fish guy. I thought, “Oh my God. I already said yes to the kids about the fish, but we didn’t have the conversation about how, most likely, these fish are going to perish quickly.”
But back to the fish guy.
He had a ponytail and a Grateful Dead T shirt, and he knew what he was talking about. He said, “Look, you’ve got to put these drops in. Make sure you put those drops in. Don’t put these drops in. Clean it this many times. Dump the water out here. Make sure the fish are over here when you do that because it could cause mental stress.”
I said, “Mental stress?”
He said, “Mental stress. They could become depressed. They could have anxiety.”
And what he recommended, as I was getting hustled at this point, was that we get a big tank.
“A lot of people think small fish, small tank,” he said. “But that’s not the case. You’ve got to create a big living environment.”
So I got a forklift.
I got a giant aquarium. I got stones. I got treasure chests and skulls. I got three happy kids. They got three little fish, and they were all different colors.
We drove home, and setting this thing up took probably three and a half hours.
But once I did, and I was looking at it, with the lights coming through, it was clean that first day. It was beautiful. It was new. It was awesome.
Then days went by.
I got caught up at work, and I noticed there was a little green slime, algae, and sludge. I thought, “Maybe I put the wrong drops in.”
So I was in there cleaning. I was removing the water. I was moving the fish over.
Then it began to snowball, where maintaining the fish aquarium for these three fish became my full time job.
I spent at least two and a half hours maintaining this living ecosystem every single day, with the fear that these fish were going to die.
Which meant it was time for Cori and me to have a talk with the kids.
I went in, and I gave one of the greatest speeches I’ve ever given about life and death and eternity and the temporary paradigm we find ourselves in.
I talked about hope and faith and how everyone has different ideas about what comes next. But if we keep our eye on the larger universe and remain humbled by all creation, we will know that, no matter what happens here, we’re all infinite.
I went crazy.
I nailed it.
I nailed it so much that the kids were never afraid of their fish dying.
When the first fish died, my middle son showed no emotion.
So when we delivered the news, I said, “Hey, the little blue fish passed away.”
My son said, “Sorry to hear that.”
Then the second fish died.
I went to my oldest son and said, “Hey, man. I’m really sorry about this. Do you want us to have a funeral or bury him?”
He said, “No. He’s one with the universe now.”
And I started thinking, maybe I should let them learn about the world the way I did.
You get pets, and they die. You’re left with the shock of what life really is. The fragility and the beauty of it.
But you’ve got to learn the hard way.
I didn’t do that.
So now we were left with one fish.
My daughter had named it Poop.
The fish’s name was Poop.
Poop was a little tiny goldfish. I don’t think it was technically a goldfish, but it had this orange kind of flare to it. And it was living in this giant aquarium, the biggest aquarium ever.
It had the run of the lot, and I made it my mission to keep this fish alive.
At this point, by the way, no one was even looking at the fish. No one was talking to the fish. My daughter wasn’t checking on the fish. No one was even engaging with the fish except me.
I was developing this close bond with Poop.
Until something unbelievable happened.
One day, I was changing out the water because I had let it go for too long, and it had gotten a little green. So I was doing a big clean.
I moved Poop over to this little bucket with fresh water, and I had a certain amount of time to get everything done.
I cleaned the aquarium and put Poop back in.
Then we both just looked at each other.
Me and the fish.
And I swear to you, Poop looked like, even though this whole world had been made for him, he was having a Truman Show moment. It was almost as if he knew this wasn’t where he was supposed to be and that it wasn’t where he was from.
I swear to you, this was the weirdest thought that came into my mind.
I went into the bathroom for about fifteen minutes.
During that time, something must have happened.
I was the only one home, and when I came back out to the aquarium, the fish was on the ground.
He wasn’t flopping. He wasn’t moving.
He had hurled himself out of the tank because I had forgotten to put the lid on.
He had jumped out of the aquarium.
And I started wondering, did he do this on purpose?
Was life so bad? Was living with us so bad that he had to do this?
Then I thought, “My God. I’m a failure.”
I let the one thing I tried to keep, the one thing I tried to protect, die.
The only thing I could think of was to get a spatula from upstairs because I didn’t want to hurt him.
I slipped the spatula underneath him.
He wasn’t moving.
I touched him. He wasn’t moving.
He had that look in his eye where there’s an X.
This fish was dead.
And my only thought was, “What if I just put him back in the water?”
Even though it had been ten or fifteen minutes and he had been dead, his energy was gone.
Still, I took the spatula and dropped him back in the tank.
He dropped to the bottom.
I thought, “Well, there’s no use now.”
So I went to get the little scooper out of the utility room.
When I came back, Poop was swimming.
Bright eyed.
He was alive.
I swear to you, this fish died and came back from the dead.
And he was swimming with an energy I had never seen before. It was like he had new life.
Poop went on to live a pretty long life.
Eventually, he died of natural causes.
No one really talks about the fish anymore, and I feel like no one really believes me that it happened.
They think it was just a phase we went through, the way every family goes through a phase where they have fish.
But I saw something I can’t explain.
Where are you, Poop?
Where are you swimming?
Where did you go now?
Are you swimming in the big ocean in the sky?
If you ever want to come back and visit, we’re here in the same place.
And if you do, I’ll turn your favorite television program on, give you your favorite food, and we’ll sit there and remember the good old days.
The year, in fact, of the fish resurrection.
I’ll talk to you next week.