{"id":1232,"date":"2008-11-06T06:40:16","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T11:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:36:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:36:04","slug":"requiescat-in-pace-marvin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1232","title":{"rendered":"Requiescat In Pace, Marvin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marvin-1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Marvin died the other day. He was 13 years old. For a goldfish, that’s about 120 in human years.<\/p>\n

We knew he wasn’t long for this world, so I took this picture of him just a few days before he “passed on” (for you librul Yankees, that’s Deep Southern for “croaked”). Some of you knew him. In fact, if you’ve ever visited our home and used our hall bathroom, you may have got to know him quite well, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

Later this month, I’ll turn 47. A pretty boring, inconspicuous birthday like that doesn’t usher in thoughts of mortality for most people, but for me it’s a different story. My father died in 1980 when he was 47, just a month before I graduated from high school. If I’m alive on March 15, 2009, I will have lived one day longer than he did.<\/p>\n

So what’s that got to do with a dead goldfish? Not much, really. But Marvin’s death has given me the opportunity to collect my thoughts on living and dying and put them in the form of a column for this coming Sunday’s Huntsville Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That’s right, I’m going to eulogize a goldfish in Sunday’s paper. Can a 25-cent goldfish show us how to live a simple and righteous life? Check back on Sunday and find out.<\/p>\n

Marvin, I miss you buddy. The hall bathroom will never be the same.<\/p>\n

Requiescat in pace.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marvin died the other day. He was 13 years old. For a goldfish, that’s about 120 in human years. We knew he wasn’t long for this world, so I took this picture of him just a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,92,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-huntsville-times-community-columns","category-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9260,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions\/9260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}