Write Drunk, Edit Sober
Picture this. It’s 2002. You went to the Scholastic book fair earlier tht day and rode the bus home to an empty house. You sit on the floor in front of your huge, 20 inch box TV and switch it to channel 3. Your favorite Nickelodeon sketch comedy, All That, is about to start. Life is good.
Jeston is a former student of Texas A&M, the author of Jesse Granger: Bushranger in Hit the Ground Running, and a volunteer at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX.
I’m sorry that I haven’t written in a long time. Life got hectic after that last post. It’s actually crazy how quickly it moved. I met some new people, went through some stuff with them, and went through a lot of stuff on my own in just these past three months. I can’t remember everything that happened right now but if any of the experiences come up later I’ll talk about them. I just wanted to write you today so that if I turned up missing or dead in the near future, you would know why.
It all started a couple weeks before Christmas. In our office, we play Secret Santa and if for some reason you don’t know what that is, it’s where you get assigned a person in the office to give presents to for a week but you can’t tell them you’re the one giving them presents until the week is up. I gave my person a coffee mug and some fuzzy socks. I tried to keep my identity a secret but she knew it was me.
I, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea who my Secret Santa was. On the first day, I received nothing. I sat at my desk empty-handed while everyone else enjoyed the presents their Santas had dropped off throughout the day. It was much of the same story on the second day. By now I was started to get agitated. Had my Secret Santa forgotten about me?
Finally, on the third day a coworker walked up to me holding a large back with Charlie Brown and Snoopy riding a sled on the front of it. “Special delivery from Santa Claus” he said. I was so excited I tore into the bag without thinking twice. My hand gripped what felt like a small cup. I pulled it out of the bag without a second thought but what I held should not have been handled to quickly and carelessly. A splash of water covered my hand and I looked in disbelief as I realized I had just pulled a betta fish out of my bag.
He was sleek and red and very angry. I loved him. I sent a mass email to everyone in the office asking for possible names. We ended up having five names to choose from: Rocky, Rudolph, Bush (RIP George HW), Nicholas, and The Real Swim Shady.
The Real Swim Shady won by a landslide.
I don’t think Shady likes me. It seems like every time I look at him, he’s flared up and staring at me. He’s calmed down some since he’s realized that I’m the one who gives him food but I still think he hates me. I think he wants me dead. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him make a throat-slashing gesture with his fins but I can’t be 100% sure. He’s just lurking in his tank waiting for me to slip up so he can take me out. He just sits and stares at me. He’s doing it right now! I hope he can’t read what I’m typing. If he can, then I’m dead for sure. If he can, then I guess this is goodbye.
I’ll miss you.
Follow me: @DoHpodcast and @JestonTexeira
Jeston is a former student of Texas A&M, the author of Jesse Granger: Bushranger in Hit the Ground Running, and a volunteer at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX.