53 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
"Once There Was A Fish"
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Doug Rosentrater
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Once there was a fish who lived in the great ocean, and because the water
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was transparent, and always conviently got out of his nose when he moved along,
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he reallly didn't know that he was in the ocean.
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One day this fish did a very dangerous thing: he began to think. "Surely I
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am a most remarkable being," he thought, "since I can move around like this in
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the missle of empty space." Then the fish became confused because of his
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thinking about his moving and swimming, and he suddenly had an anxiety
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paroxysm, and thought that he had forgotten how. At the same moment, he looked
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down and saw the yawning chasm of the ocean depths stretching below him, and he
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was terrified that he would drop.
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Then he thought desperately: "If I could catch hold of my tail in my mouth,
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I could hold myself up." And so he curled himself up the best he could and
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snapped at his tail. Unfortunately, his spine wasn't quite supple enough, and
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so he missed. As he went on trying to catch hold of his tail, the yawning black
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abyss below became even more terrible. He began to slowly drift down since he
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wasn't swimming anymore, and the poor fish found himself on the edge of a total
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nervous breakdown.
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Just then a shark, who had been watching with mixed feelings of pity and
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amusement, said, "what are you doing?" The fish looked up, surprised to see the
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shark, and replied, " I'm terrified of falling, so I am trying to hold myself
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up, but I can't reach my tail." And with this he started nervously sobbing and
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drifting farther down.
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"well, if that is the case, then why haven't you fallen into the depths
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before this?" inquiored th shark in a slow voice.
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"Of course, I hadn't fallen down earlier, because...because I was swimming."
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"Oh," said the shark, "Then why don't you stop biting your tail and go back
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to swimming?"
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The fish gasped and suddenly realized that all of his fears were his own
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fault. He started swimming and immediately came back up to the shark's level.
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"You know," said the shark, " the Great Ocean supports you all the time you
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swim. But here you are, instead of exploring its length, breadth, and depth,
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wasting...absolutely wasting your time exploring nothing but your own end. If
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you don't wise up quickly, then you might as well be a stone instead of a
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fish!" And with that the shark drifted off to find his lunch somewhere.
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From then on, the fish put his own end behind him (where it belonged) and
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set out to explore the Great Ocean, secure in the knowledge that as long as he
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swam, he wouldn't fall.
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