The Aquarium Man

January 16, 2008 - 5:33 PM by

This week while hanging out in an office reception area waiting to see “A Person About Stuff” the aquarium man arrived to clean out the office fish tank.

He stood partially obscured behind a partition counter between the reception and kitchen areas where the aquarium served as a room separator and set about the task of diligently scrubbing the inside walls of the glass fish house; The poor gill breathers probably got more excitement than they’d had in a lifetime what with the unexpected man-made tsunami going on inside the tank.

But the tank needed the clean-up. It was filthy. So filthy that when aquarium man started scrubbing the glass, it turned the color of medium strength tea mixed with floaty bits and blobby pieces.

After a few minutes I heard the aquarium man cough, sputter and gag. He then ran from behind the counter to the toilet and (oh please don’t get sick; i don’t want to hear you get sick) spit into the toilet several times.

He then returned to his place behind the counter and resumed doing whatever it is aquarium men do. Again, the coughing and sputtering started up. What is going on with this guy? i thought.

Standing to stretch i.e. get a better view of him, I saw that what he was doing, in fact, was draining the aquarium into a bucket by creating a vacuum. The vacuum was started by aquarium man sucking through a piece of cut-off garden hose running from the tank to the bucket.

OMG!!!!! I thought. Hellllloooooo!!!! Disease? Fungus? Illness? Death?

Another woman in the reception area saw what I saw and, in disgust, turned her grimaced face away from Mr. Aquarium.

GO-BUY-A-PUMP…(aren’t there regulations in this country against this kind of thing?)

Lord have mercy. Fun fun fun. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Comments

2 Comments on The Aquarium Man

  1. Rattling The Kettle on Wed, Jan 16th 2008 7:06 PM

    2. From first-hand experience, I can tell you that sometimes, when you can’t get the suction tube working with gravity alone, you need to give it a little suck to get it started.

    And, also, I can tell you that aquarium water doesn’t taste as bad as you may think. It’s pretty bad, but not as bad as, say, the shower water in Dahab…

  2. Stephanie on Wed, Jan 16th 2008 7:42 PM

    3. LOL…I hate to imagine that water bit but somehow can’t remember the Dahab H20 tasting terrible. I DID HATE those squat holes for toilets, though…

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