Today is Neeny’s birthday. In honor of that, I’m posting a thing I wrote a while ago about one of my favorite memories with her.
The Friday before I started my freshman year at Incarnate Word High School, I attended freshman orientation with one thought on my mind.
Fish.
A few days earlier, at Final Registration, some teacher had given us a rundown of the all-day orientation event that culminated in a picnic with our Big Sisters—the seniors who’d been assigned to help us acclimate to life at our all-girls Catholic high school. The teacher mentioned that freshman were sometimes referred to as “fish” and that the Big Sisters liked to give us fish-themed presents at the picnic. Some freshmen even received actual, living fish from their Big Sisters.
At home, I had a family dog, a family cat, and much to my mother’s dismay, two hamsters of my own whose cages I constantly “forgot” to clean. But I’d never had a fish before, and my brain did a tiny mental happy dance at the thought of getting a new pet.
I knew the chances of receiving a live fish in my freshman gift basket were pretty slim, but I still hoped. Throughout the whole orientation, as I listened to teachers explain our class schedules and watched student council members demonstrate dress code violations, the thought of fish niggled at the back of my brain. By the time we gathered outside the gym for our picnic lunch, I could hardly stand the suspense.