Overall, life was pleasant for the School of Fish. Most of the fish in the school were seahorses, and they dutifully learned the basic skills of Seahorse Life.  From an early age, they learned how  to avoid predators and blend in with the coral; as the slowest-moving fish in the sea, it was essential that they simply follow the algorithm so that they could safely reach adulthood.

But oddly enough, there was one Puffer Fish who attended this Seahorse School. On certain days, the Puffer Fish seemed to integrate seamlessly into Seahorse Society.  But on other days, the Puffer Fish would erratically inflate, and there was an underlying fear among the seahorses that the Puffer Fish was poisonous.  Simple communication with the Puffer Fish would have quelled this misconception, but instead, the Puffer Fish was steadily ostracized.

And it was a difficult situation; it wasn’t necessarily the role of seahorses to understand the Puffer Fish.  But despite his best efforts to learn the ways of the seahorse, the Puffer Fish began to flounder over time.

And then one day, the seahorses saw the Puffer Fish stray from the group.  They all gasped in horror as the Puffer Fish swam unwittingly towards the occult lair of a Treacherous Tiger Shark. But no one said a word.

Maybe they should have said something. They didn’t dislike the Puffer Fish. And they sort of hoped that the Puffer Fish would somehow make it out alive. But there just wasn’t any precedent for Puffer Fish interactions in the seahorse school curriculum. Plus, it would have been inconvenient, and they still weren’t sure whether or not the Puffer Fish was poisonous.

C’est la vie.

“The opposite of love is not hate-it’s apathy.”

-Leo Buscaglia