It's all good...

I am not a pet person. I am pretty sure it's because I didn't grow up with any pets. We never had a dog or a cat or an iguana or anything else people allow to run around their abodes. We did occassionally have some fish in a tank, but that doesn't count in my mind as a pet.

When I was a sophomore in college, my mom bought me a beta fish for my birthday. This was during the time when betas were a big deal, and they lived within bowls with pretty rocks and perhaps a plant as a roof. It may be a fact that some betas lived better than some people on this earth. They had a whole plant to themselves, what could be better than that?

Anyway, during this time, I was studying Italian. While I could read Italian well and understand the grammatical stuff, I couldn't speak it very well. I tried in class every day, but it was one of those classes where I was intimidated by the other students and didn't want to sound stupid. So I struggled in the daily lessons. I had an awesome professor, though, and he was always overly-encouraging when I was trying to speak the beautiful words. He would praise me by often saying, "Bene, bene!" or "Molto bene!" to let me know that I did a good job or made a good effort.

I told my friend in my class that my mom purchased me this beta fish, and I wasn't sure what to name it. The whole process of naming a fish seemed odd to me since this was not something I had ever done before. My friend suggested I name it something in Italian to honor the fact that I was studying the language. The best I could come up with was to name my fish, "Bene." It seemed appropriately because it was the only word I understood in any context and at any time.

My friends would often ask me, "Carol, how's your fish?" I enjoyed answering this question. Every time, I would respond, "He's good" because, in fact, he was.

How could he have been any different?