On Flashing Red Lights

Chatting with Olive about a third person's relationship ¹ brought up the phrase "That would be a big fucking flashing red light to me." Which reminded me of a night out in Ariccia ² with some friends about a year ago.

Thanks to a discussion about how someone's cats would pet their fish, I found myself recounting the time the Shithead had bought two goldfish. For the cats to eat.

He had always gone on ³ about buying them either a couple of white mice or goldfish to eat, arguing that it was in their animal nature. I had always put my foot down, not only because ewww, cruel but also knowing how the cats played with their toys, I didn't really want to clean mousey blood spatter off the white walls of the flat.


At the time, I would occasionally head north a few days for work meetings. It was during one of these trips that I received an SMS from Shithead. Taking advantage of my absence, he had bought two goldfish and chucked them in a tub for the cats. The cats apparently merely patted the fish with their paws for a bit, drank the water and then wandered off. Near the end of the evening, seeing as it was obvious there would be no displays of mass Ichthycide carnage, he stuck the goldfish in a chipped carafe we no longer used. Later he forgot that A) the goldfish were in the carafe and B) we no longer used that carafe and thus poured himself a nice tall glass of goldfish pee.

Karma: It's what's for breakfast, bitches.

When I came home, I baptised the smaller goldfish Pranzo (Lunch) and the larger one Cena (Dinner) because hey, it's well established that I have a perverse sense of humour. No matter how long you would leave the fish in a wide open tub while cleaning the aquarium, the cats would only gently pat them and drink the water. I guess the Call of the Wild tried calling collect.

Upon conclusion of my tale, the girl friend sitting directly across from me deadpanned

"He bought two goldfish for the cats to play with and eat live. Was that not a huge clue about what kind of person you were dating?"

I could feel my face go completely slack in that moment, eyes huge and jaw gaping in revelation of the what-should-have-been obvious. It's really too bad I got walloped with the "You're dating a sociopath" clue-by-four about 6 months after the NRA II: RNRA.

Flashing Red Lights. If they see me ignoring any more FRLs,  I've already given my friends instructions to haul me off to a remote cabin and apply liberal use of bitchslapping until the sense is knocked back into me.

¹ Ok fine. We were gossiping like two biddies at the country club
² Home of awesome porchetta om nom nom
³ Most often in the wee hours of the night when The Lads were over, and the level of joint smokeage was epic. Which was also probably why I never took the threat seriously.