It was a hot hot Sunday. Even the water in my confinement space was warm. I was swimming around restlessly worried if my water became too warm and started to boil…I wasn’t about ready to go just yet.
Clarence was looking at me worriedly and so I swam up to him and spoke to him through the walls of my confinement space. I told him why I was swimming around in a semi-frenzy state and he explained to me the physics of water and temperature. I then calmed down and started moving to other topics, trying to egg Clarence to talk more about the humans and their world when I noticed that he was no longer really paying attention to what I was saying.
“What’s wrong with you? You seem far away.”
“Sorry. I’m in a kind of a bind and I’m just thinking of my situation.” Clarence looked lost, for once.
“What situation?”
“I like one of the stationery here…well she’s not exactly stationery. A gadget to be precise. Her name’s Tara, the TV remote and she’s simply divine. I guess by now she knows I sort of like her but she doesn’t really know how much I’m in love with her though most of the other items around here can see right through me when I’m in her presence.. and I don’t know how to tell her and I also think she wouldn’t feel the same about me.”
I pondered for a moment, letting the information sink in.
Another tale of unrequitted love like mine? At least Clarence was in love with his own kind who knew he existed. My situation was much much worse. And weird.
According to Clarence, he had always been in love with Tara since they had existed at 3. He would spend days sneaking peeks at her when she wasn’t looking. He marvelled at her gorgeous blue slim body and colourful keys and the way she gracefully switched channels for Owner. Now and then she would notice Clarence, hang around with him and have a chat. Even attend screenings at her telly together. But he never really knew for sure if she liked him as a friend or more than that. Clarence then revealed more information to me and I was surprised to find that Clarence was indeed an intense calculator. At times he even seemed like a harmless stalker, revealing to me that he had various recollections of contact with Tara recorded into his numericals, and stored in his body’s internal memory. Of course no one had access to it except Clarence and whoever/whatever he chose to show it to.
I never noticed the remote and I never knew she was a she or that she had a name or could talk. This was getting ridiculous. First the stationery and now the other gadgets too? What next?
She was just a tv remote, what was so special about her? But from the looks of it (yes, Clarence let me into his display and showed me his little shrine to his divine), she had lots of similarities to him and poor Clarence had fallen, and fallen so deep into a hole that he had dug that which had no bottom, or at least the both of us couldn’t see the bottom yet. He seemed to fear the unknown or what he believed was going to be the outcome when he finally did muster up the courage to confess to Tara.
And Clarence had another problem. He seemed to think that his grey body and white keys, and his nerdy reason for existence (calculating) was not attractive enough to warrant any special attention from Tara. He seemed to think that Tara would not respond the same to his feelings. But to me it was all a matter of confidence and self belief. If indeed Clarence was hopelessly in love with Tara, he should be bold and make a move, fight for the attention of his lady love. And even if Tara did not respond positively, then so be it, it was her loss. Clarence had nothing to lose and he would be at peace knowing that he had tried rather than not having tried at all. It is always better to love and let go than to never know at all (does that make sense, not sure, I thought I heard something like that once on tv).
If only Clarence knew how lucky he was to fall in love with his own kind. At least she knew he existed, she hung with him and they spoke. As for me, I was in love with the worst forbidden species of all, a human, and one that was a trillion billion sizes larger than me. For a little fish like me, it was blasphemous even to think of such things…and she never even looked at me even to see me as a pet…*sigh* How I hate her and love her at the same time.
Love knows no bounds. Humans, fish, stationery, remotes, we all fall in and out of love.
I liked Clarence despite the fact that we had only met and were two strangers who met by chance by shared interests. He was friend material, that was for sure. And contrary to what he thought of himself, he wasn’t bad looking at all, smart, funny and a talented storyteller. He also never failed to educate and inform me. He was one of those people whom I knew I would always be friends with, he was genuine sans any form of pretense or fakeness.
So I decided to help Clarence in his bid to hook up with Tara, how and when and where I did not know, but I vowed to think of something. In the meantime, I hoped Tara would come to her senses and see how lucky she was that someone like Clarence was into her.
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