Episode 28: Ned has a tiny, rubbery mermaid

Thursday

Ned has a tiny, rubbery mermaid that if you put in water, it will grow to 10X its size, or more, over the course of a few days. The story goes that it was at his house, and he was asked by his wife to throw it out. 

Ned’s allergic reaction to throwing things out is to bring them to his office, which now looks like a lazily pillaged dollar store from 1987. He’s a hoarder of rare and incongruous things, some of which I have been “gifted”—the gummy, neon-green calculator in the shape of a gecko, for example.

He brings the mermaid into my office and declares that I have to put it in water and look after it. “I got you this pickle jar for her,” he says. “I want you to take good care of her.”

“Why don’t you keep it in your office?” I ask.

“Because,” he says, “I need you to show me that you can care for something. Instead of destroying it.”

I realize, then, that I am being told something I deserve to hear on a number of levels, several of which Ned can’t possibly know. He’s become my accidental and admonishing oracle, and I now have what is, presumably, a nearly full-grown mermaid in a jar.