...But you can't help him dive. It was a day like any other... until, that is, Pluto, our office fish, heard this story about Casa Bonita on NPR's All Things Considered. He decided that his true calling was not to be an office fish, swimming about and happily consuming fish pellets, but instead to be a Casa Bonita cliffdiver. We attempted to reason with him: reminding him just how good his life is, speculating that they probably don't hold cliff-diving tryouts during business hours, informing him that we couldn't get sopapillas into his fish bowl without serious problems. Nothing worked. He just wouldn't stop talking about going to Casa Bonita.
Pluto may be a Betta, but he's very bull-headed. So, off to Casa Bonita he went with Sara, the reporting and analytics specialist here at WideFoc.us.
In case you didn't follow along with Pluto's #PlutoDives exploits on Twitter, we've put together this recap blog post so everyone can join in on the fun of one fish's dream to dive. (Side note: If you're not following Pluto on Twitter, you can put an end to that silliness right now by following him at Twitter.com/WideFocusCo.)
First, Pluto was confused by the sign advertising other entertainment options, including dancing monkeys. He insisted the sign only need to advertise the cliff diving. The idea of dancing monkeys being somehow on equal level to cliff divers caused Pluto to go off on a tangent about his cousins, Spanish Dancer Sea Slugs. No one really followed along, but that didn’t stop Pluto from going on and on and on…
After getting inside and ordering the customary Casa Bonita meal, Pluto got even antsier waiting for the cliff diving show to begin. Sara picked up his bowl and took him for a walk, to show him the other sights of Casa Bonita. We discovered that Pluto is afraid of the dark and does not like caves. He does like treasure and pirates, but not enough to have enjoyed Black Bart’s Cave in all its silly glory. He panicked and was causing a scene that both confused and upset the children nearby, so back to the dining room he went.
Finally, the cliff diving began. Once Pluto saw the graceful divers, he grew very quiet, mesmerized by their form and technique. Alas, divers only dive for some of the time, and as soon as they stopped Pluto grew quite irate. He demanded that someone carry him up to the top of the cliffs so that he could embrace his true calling and leap from his bowl down the 30-foot drop over the cliffs to the pool below.
By this time, Sara and her dinner companions were a bit tired of Pluto’s bratty behavior. He is normally such a pleasant, calm office fish—it’s lovely to watch him swim in his bowl, he’s eager for fish pellets, and he’s a marvelous conversationalist. The dream of cliff diving proved too much for Pluto’s apparently fragile psyche, however, as he melted down in a tantrum that would put many toddlers to shame.
Pluto and his bowl were left in the jaws of a nearby jungle creature to give Pluto time to think about his pool public behavior and to ponder the golden rule.
Once Pluto normalized he was ready to go back to the office. He realized that dreams are wonderful things, but obsession is the stuff of nightmares.
—by Leah Charney
Leah Charney is sassy yet classy and is most excited by the things she can't stop writing about, like food, music, and people. She directs operations for the WideFoc.us team, which is just a fancy way of saying she is chief cat herder.
