I fell into the Potomac. This is my story.
I’ll just come right out and say it. I can talk to fish.
Carp, catfish, goldfish, pufferfish, monkfish–you name it. But this magical power is not a gift. It’s torture.
And I mean, literally, torture. I’ve learned that fish love to tear each other down. They make Comedy Central Roasts look like a love fest. And now, like a bad case of verbally abusive tinnitus, they’re always making fun of me. Everywhere I go, their little fish minds hurl adolescent-grade insults my way.
I never thought something like this would happen to me. One minute, I was minding my own business paddle boarding down the Potomac river and the next, I was submerged in sewage-infested water with my life flashing before my eyes.
“Please don’t do this,” my mom had begged. “Not a good idea,” my co-workers had warned. “No one ever gets wet,” I assured them. “No one actually gets in.”
I blame the fourteen-year-old dock boys who told me to take a knee as I floated towards the landing to return my board. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for their silly “procedures”. A slight shift in my balance and–WHAM! I plummeted into that murky abyss faster than you can say E. coli.
Four seconds underwater was all it took to derail my life. Who was I to think I could enjoy a leisurely float down rank-city without consequence? I rolled the super-dice, and of all the curses the river gods could have inflicted, this is a burden I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies.
I noticed something was wrong while waiting in line for my pick up order at Sushi Rock. A red and yellow koi fish swam in lazy circles around the tank buzzing near the hostess stand. While thinking about how cute it was, a gravely smoker’s voice cut through the silence.
“Hey.”
I glanced around. No one.
“Hey–Big Bird!”
The hairs on my arm stood on end. Was the koi fish….talking to me?
“Your face looks like Matt LeBlanc’s knuckles.” Yeah, the koi fish was talking to me.
I sprinted out of Sushi Rock and hightailed it to my cousin’s house. He has a purple betta fish called Murphy, and I needed to know for sure whether or not I was going insane. I leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Murphy swim in and out of his subaqueous medieval castle.
Three minutes ticked by.
Five minutes ticked by.
Silence. Relief flooded through my limbs. I turned to leave when suddenly I heard, “You’re so ugly that when your mom dropped you off at school, she got a ticket for littering.”
My heart sank. I could talk to fish. Life was already hard enough without the added pressure of a straight jacket and padded cell.
Fish are mean. They’re nothing like Dori from Nemo. I know this because I tried talking back once. You know, to a fish. A Spotted Nymph was taunting me from a plastic bag on the prize shelf at the Arlington County Fair. “Stop it,” I ordered “or I’ll suffocate you.” A woman with a pirate ship tattooed across her forearm was standing in front of me in line. She whipped around, grabbed me by the collar, slammed me against the score board and asked if I wanted to die.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve given up on living a normal life. It’s just not possible. Not since I fell into the Potomac.
So I grit my teeth and bear the constant, relentless roasting. Here’s a taste of what I endure any time I find myself near a body of water:
At my friend’s lake house in Georgia–a perch: “You look like something I’d draw with my left hand.” Joke’s on him, because fish don’t have hands. They have pectoral gills.
Getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist office–a goldfish: “You are the reason toothpaste has directions.”
In PetCo buying litter for my roommate’s cat–a guppy: “How often do you get mistaken for Zach Galifianakis?”
At my great aunt’s house–her Neon Tetra, whose glass bowl sits next to the TV: “You’re tacky and I hate you.” Over and over and over again. I said, “Mind your own damn business.” Okay no, I didn’t say that. Since I was trembling in fear like a 12 year old girl in a middle school lunchroom, I gently asked him if he could find it in his heart to please stop being so mean. He considered it, then quipped back, “You’re adopted–and still tacky.”
In the lobby at work, observing the building’s new saltwater aquarium–an angelfish: “Your boss is right. You’re a bigger disappointment than Justin Bieber’s sobriety test in 2014.”
Lobby, the saltwater tank–a pufferfish: “What’s it like, being such a blank canvas of a person?”
Same tank, a dragonface pipefish: “You know that feeling when you’re totally at ease and secure in the world? Just completely in touch with reality and invigorated by every thought of the future? Of course you don’t.”
Yesterday, at The Rainforest Cafe, two parrot fish: “Remember that one time in high school when you asked that cute senior boy from the soccer team to prom and he just laughed, said ‘Is this a joke?’ and walked away? Just making sure.”
Unceasing beratement. Ear plugs make no difference. My mind is irrevocably synched with the consciousness of fish. That’s the price I pay for falling into DC's dumpster basin.
If you’re considering any form of bodily contact with that toxic wasteland of a river, I am begging you, along with the state of Virginia and the authorities of Washington, DC, to please believe me when I say it’s just not worth the risk.
If you value your well-being and sanity, go to Decades in DuPont circle instead. Yes, I mean the three story club that is teeming with Capitol Hill interns who exclusively drink vodka soda. I would suggest hanging out in a dark alleyway in Shaw after midnight before I would suggest jumping in the Potomac river. Accept a ride on the back of a stranger’s ATV in Anacostia. Go anywhere, do anything except flirt with the line that prevents your worst nightmares from becoming an all-consuming, never ending, permanent reality.
UPDATE
Great news! I saw a doctor. As it turns out, the fish weren’t talking after all. Apparently, a legion of Potomac-native parasites munched their way through my cerebral cortex and into my temporal lobe, totally reactivating dormant ichthyophobia (fear of fish) receptors in my brain–ha! Rivers.
