Thursday, August 27, 2009

Girl detective

So today I was going through pictures of my work, right, and I found a picture in this office with a fish. In a fishbowl. And at first I was just all, aw, the leetle fish. Look at the pretty colors. Isn't it nice? La la la. I carried on going through the pictures, whatever whatever, and after a while it hit me: That is a picture of a fish on my desk. My desk does not have a fish on it. WHERE IS THE FISH?

I thought maybe the fish was somewhere else around the office and I just hadn't seen it, so I went hunting. I looked all around my desk. I looked in the meeting room area. I looked in the kitchen. I looked in the stuff room & the other stuff room & my boss's office.

NO FISH.

By now I had begun to suspect that somebody, sometime, had come into this office and played a game they called UP UP UP with the fish!, and had had poorer balance than some players of this game, and the fish in question had not had the good fortune to land in a pot full of water from which it could continue to express its dismay about the turn the game had taken. There are no pots full of water in this office so it couldn't have fallen into one, and I was growing ever more worried about the fate of the fish.

When my boss came back, I said, "Those pictures of the office are very good,"and he said, "Oh, you like them?" and I, having achieved my segue with a minimum of effort, said severely, "WHERE IS THE FISH?"

"Fish?" he said.

I would make a fantastic investigative journalist. I wouldn't let people get away with anything. I did not let my boss get away with this. "THE FISH FROM THE PICTURES," I said.

"It's gone," he explained.

"BECAUSE YOU KILLED IT?" I said.

I know, I know. I missed my calling. I should have become a journalist as previously noted, or possibly an expert interrogator. I would not need to torture people sneakily, because I would get the truth out of them using only my words.

The fish didn't die. You will be relieved to hear. The fish from the pictures was someone else's fish. Not an office fish. Not somewhere dead of neglect in this office because I didn't know about it when I started working here.

Phew.

(Mumsy, don't worry - that is not really what happened. I did not go snooping through the rest of the office, or interrogate my boss. I asked politely and he explained politely. I did not really miss my calling to be an investigative journalist or witness interrogator; I know that my true calling is to be a writer of amusing fictions.)

2 comments:

Robyn said...

How do you know he wasn't lying to cover up his foul fish-slaughtering habits?

Jenny said...

...I really don't. But detective work is too stressful for me.