I wasn’t expecting this, I have to tell you. I like to think that I’m prepared for most anything, that I can handle whatever comes my way, but I keep it in the the back of my head that there may be surprises. Still, the very act of anticipating things that you can’t anticipate means that, really, you have thought of them before hand. You’re just pretending that you don’t know about them so that when they do occur you can act surprised even as you take the very action that these particular events demand.
And I have to say, I’ve gotten through most of my life successfully, thanks to this philosophy. There have been those who thought that they could take advantage of what they perceived to be my naivete, only to discover that I was, in reality, a wizened sage who was one step ahead of them.
So you can imagine my surprise when this afternoon, at precisely two-thirty, I discovered the one thing I had not prepared for, the one thing for which I did not have a ready response: a guppy in my soup.
And no, it was not guppy soup. I do not know if such a thing even exists, but I can assure you that if it did, I would never order such a thing. Not even at a sushi restaurant. No, this should have been a consommé, liquid only, with nothing solid and nothing living within.
But there it was. A guppy. The first guppy, in fact, that I had ever seen. You wonder, I daresay, how it is that I knew that this was a guppy? I had seen a picture of a guppy once, and such things stay with me. It is one of the reasons I am prepared for any — I should say almost any, having been surprised this one time — eventuality.
A guppy. In my soup. And why? I was unable to obtain an answer to this question because the story ended with this sentence.