On the idea of
drowning fish...
My mom, the
grammarian, often found herself sputtering when she'd become
angry enough. She'd
yell at us kids, confuse our names, spout enraged
nonsense statements composed mainly of four syllable words, arcane phrases or
Catholic threats of damnation.
My
brother was one of those kids who have a
zillion cages of critters and
tanks of fish. He was a little
lazy, however, and on occasion would be less than fastidious about
cleaning the tanks. I heard her in his room one day, hollering at him to clean the fish tanks. As she stepped from his room, she turned back to
deliver one last
threat.
"If you don't keep those tanks clean, I'm going to drown all your fish!"
Both of us knew better than to
laugh.