Word: goldfish
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Saturday night, I took the #1 bus from Harvard Square--already overrun with braided leather belts and the L.L. Bean shoes that Andover kids call "mocs"--to Central square. Because I don't have a dog and because it would have been too embarassing to bring my bowl of goldfish onto the bus, I decided that I would pick up some sort of conversation piece once I reached my destination...
...crowd of people, children mostly, who were squatting around a circular, white, plastic tub. Many small hands swirled in the tub's water. Each hand held a round, metal loop that had white filter paper stretched across its diameter. Hand and metal-paper extension followed swarms of multi-sized goldfish darting around the tub. Each hand and its loop was eager to win a fish by successfully scooping it out of the tub with the water-weakened paper net. Wise hands targeted the large schools of pinky-sized goldfish, hoping to catch at least one light trophy from the crowd...
...attention was diverted when I noticed a more ambitious hand maneuver its paper loop under the largest goldfish in the tub, and lift it swiftly out of the water. I watched the goldfish as it lay tenuously in an iridescent arc, its tail and head hanging over the sides of the fragile circle. In a second it began to squirm and twitch. Tail and head arched spastically upward to meet the other, reversing the direction of its parabolic arc. The goldfish's contorted torso drilled through the water-weakened paper, slipped bodily through the loop in a fluorescent shimmer...
...driven to make the most unlikely comparison: the L.B.J. Ranch, it occurred to him, had "odd echoes of Chartwell," the country place of Winston Churchill. "Mr. Churchill was marvelously and unashamedly proud of everything about Chartwell . . ." Alsop said years later. "But he was proudest of all of his goldfish pond . . . 'See that one there,' he would say . . . 'the one that looks rather like Clement Attlee? I paid only 10 shillings for that one -- worth fully two pounds now, I dare say.' " Alsop was reminded of his visit to Chartwell when he toured the L.B.J. Ranch at high speed...
Patriotism demands at least one more world-shaking, American-made trend. Surely the nation that invented goldfish swallowing and the leisure suit is not willing to exit the millennium watching reruns on Nick at Nite. Arise, ye pallid twentysomethings, and do something deeply silly...