Scale of Change

"Where are you going?" Mom recently asked me when i took a break from my office (which is in the house).

"I'm going to go have a cup of tea and watch my fish change color."

"Oh, okay."

My five goldfish aren't changing so dramatically that you can spot the differnce after one cup of tea, but I still marvel at their changes, nonetheless. That Napoleon, the smallest fish, has actually GROWN let alone change his dorsal fin color, is truly miraculous. Napoleon now has a trnasparant black spoton his dorsal fin. It's not a sickness -- it's just part of the fin is now black.

Twin Comet, once a metallic bronze, now has turned disctinctly silver. He has also grown jowels. That's one reason why I assume he's a he.

Twin Common, also once the exact same shade of mettalic bronze, is going through the most dramamtic transformation. S/he is getting a very dark dorsal stripe with a golden-yellow belly. Every couple of days, the yellow spreads up to the face. The base of the tail is now pinkish.

We humans should go through such changes in our lifetimes -- and not just our hair color. We should be born one color and then, when the mid-life crisis is about to set in, our skins suddenly switch colors overnight. Wouldn't that be fun? One month, you're a card-carrying member of the KKK, next month you are black.

Wouldn't that help us all get to know what our fellow humans have to go through?

Nahh, probably not. We'd just find something else about the neightbors to bitch about.

Well, back to watch the fish change some more.