Next to the curb, snow was falling on the oversized orange and green fish shoved unceremoniously between the community garbage cans. Full of last month’s Thanksgiving paraphernalia, people forget to recycle at Christmas time, as though the only synonym for “useful” was “new”. As wide as the cans were tall, the fish was one of those prizes you win at a carnival game; the kind where you spend hours sending a little hoop clanking over old-fashioned green glass soda bottles just for the victory of it. Even I was guilty of begging my father to win me something like it once. This particular fish’s stringy fins must have held sequins not long ago, and surely it didn’t come with that ketchup stain on its belly – or was it a heart? Gray, fluffy stuffing was escaping from the side of its fat lips, which where perpetually puckered in style of an Aunt’s big, wet, unwanted kiss. The most pitiful part of its appearance, however, was the enormous brown eyes. Bigger than even the lips, the eyes protruded as giant globes. Like crystal balls which tell only the past. At one point they had said, “Love me! Fight for me! Win me! Take me home!” But now they stare at me, shocked and betrayed; making me feel guilty – as though the whole creation of itself was my entire fault. Stitched and stuffed for profit, without children, who would want such a thing? What motivation would any adult have for owning something so easily abandoned? Say they were pressured by friends to win it, just to prove they could. For a lover perhaps… no, true love would not need such a display of wealth and trivial eye-coordination skills. Of course, no one would take a person very seriously who entertained an oversized, hideously colored, stuffed animal in their office. A giant fish isn’t really a trophy to anyone but a child – the one thing that can relate to it the most.
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