Dead Fish

I remembered this one time when me and my girlfriend went on a date in SM North EDSA. We stumbled across this "love fortune telling machine" thingy. It was sitting just beside a Banco de Oro ATM, near the SM bakeshop, I think. This yellow love machine, well, it had many lights in it - and in the middle, decorated with some wacky font, it said that it was supposed to "judge" you on how "expert" you are with regards to the "love arena". You are supposed to place your left hand into this hole and the machine will try to predict how much of a lover are you by strange and hidden means (the whole process is entirely in a black box folks). Thinking that I could score a Love Casanova (it means that you are a love machine if you got that!) on this intriguing yet bogus machine, I immediately pulled my girlfriend's left hand just so she could see me triumph over this wacko. I was oozing with confidence back then. I even told her that I'd get the Casanova if I placed my hand there 'coz I was just so damn sweet. Well, you could say that it took me a lot of nerve from someone who understoond little about love. And so, without wasting anymore time, I reached out my pocket for a 5-peso coin, winked at her, placed my left hand into the contraption, and waited for 15 seconds while continually chanting the words "Casanova" inside my head. After 15 seconds of waiting, the machine finally replied..... well... it said that I'm a Dead Fish . Yep, that's right. And the worst part of it was that scoring a Dead Fish was the lowest score that you can get for using that machine. It was the least thing that I expected. I can understand scoring 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th to the highest.. but Dead Fish?!! man that stunk!! I mean didn't I get credit for making a lot of photo compositions of my girl at Corel? Or what about those sweet text messages that I composed myself? Or those other crazy love-related things that I made?! That would've count!! Well, surely, the machine didn't knew all of those. I mean for all I know, it probably would have just randomly selected an item from the list and then tell the person that "Okay, you are a dead fish. You are doomed for all eternity. Go home and just watch TV, loser". Anyway, the machine didn't give a clear interpretation as to what scoring a Dead Fish really meant. But also, im pretty sure that it doesn't take a rocket scientist just to figure out what scoring the lowest possible score and being tagged as Dead Fish really meant. It's pretty self explanatory... and to me, it simply means this - you just plainly suck at love. Well anyway, after a brief moment of shock, my mind returned back to Earth from its trip to "Mt. Ego" and with it were ammunitions of excuses for scoring Dead Fish that I was about to throw to my girlfriend. Well, she just laughed.. and said.. "Yuck". And what happened afterwards was history.

Back then, I really didn't accept that score and thought that the machine was just plainly bogus. But lately, I've been thinking that well, maybe the machine was right all along.. maybe I really was a Dead Fish and all this time, I've just been trying to act cool and patch things up just so I could pretend to be someone that I really am not. For someone who can't express clearly how he feels when there a lot of feelings to be told, for someone who doesn't feel a lot of anger when there are things to be angry about, for someone who forgets to care when care is needed the most, and for someone who neglects all the important things in life and blindly follows what he believes is more important.. well, that sounded a lot like Dead Fish to me.. and that surely did sounded a lot like me. Maybe the machine really did see what was beyond the me that I knew. Maybe I got more than what I invested out of the 5-peso coin that I dropped on the love machine. Maybe my girlfriend deserved more than just a Dead Fish boyfriend all along. It must have been almost like hell most of the time for her being with me - and for that, I feel really sorry. I know I can't change that now. What's gone is gone. But what I can do is just go on with my life and try to improve myself so that the next time I step on that Love Fortune Telling Machine, I'll score a Love Casanova.. errr.. maybe not that far.. maybe the 2nd to the last.. or maybe 3rd.. well, you know what, anything's good as long as its not Dead Fish! After all, I'm a hard working guy, not a genius. And just like I always say to myself, everything can be achieved with hard work.

-fin-