Spartacus

My Latin teacher got a fish. It's name is Spartacus, and it fills me alternatively with Inspiration and Despair.

You see, it's not an extroardinarily bright organism, which I suppose is all for the better. I wouldn't like to be overly ambitious and curious either if I was stuck in a tank the size of a piece of conventional tupperware. It's one of those fish that was bred to have those large, bulging eyes, and that mass was quite obviously gained at the expense of its fins, which look merely like stumps of fins, tissue thin and just as flimsy.

The fish sits in its tank all day; a small tank, filled with rather large plants at the center. Ah yes, so there it sits, and every few seconds it gives a shrug-like flap of its fins to try to stay afloat, and then slowly it starts to sink, and then bobs back up... all day long, until something amazing happens. Every once in a while, you can almost see it get an idea, like it wants to go somewhere. The other side of a leaf, usually. And so it sets out all determined, and tries to go over it, tries to go under it; usually tries to go through the damn thing a couple of times, and then finds a little opening near the stem.

Triumphantly Spartacus emerges... and then, quite curiously, it is indeed on the other side of the leaf, and the bobbing commences.

Alas, the reason for my despair is clear, but as soon as it fades away it is replaced by a sort of joy, for after all I am not Spartacus, I am human, and the world is my fish bowl, and I have not yet tired of it.