I am not a medical professional, but I do know exactly how long it takes for a heart to shatter into a thousand tiny useless pieces, and it is exactly 56 seconds. How could I know that, you ask? Because that is the exact length of this video of a little boy flushing his dead fish down the toilet and mourning it with the kind of sobs that would make wreck even the most hardened Ron Swansons among us. The dead fish's name was "Top," and the tears the entire world is shedding for him this week put our tears for Nemo to shame.
At first the little boy in the video seems unfazed by his fishy's death. It is around his age that kids are first starting to grasp the permanence of "death": Only about 10% 3-year-olds recognize its irreversibility compared to about 58% of 4-year-olds. But with short-lived pets like goldfish, kids get their first experience with it pretty early on, even if they don't quite understand what's happening. After the little boy flushes Top and away he goes into his sewer heaven, though, it is all too clear that he understands completely. Top is gone forever, and we are all bawling over dead fish that we never met.
Anyway, if you needed way too many reasons to be sad today, here were the last solemn moments celebrating Top's life before we all fell apart and didn't get any work done today:
The little boy kisses him goodbye for the last time
Top is given the honorable discharge from fishy service he deserves
And then the little boy just flat out loses it
TEARS FOREVER. If this doesn't make you want to hug every living thing that you know and love, then you're maybe not even real. Here's the full video mourning the loss of Top, who is now braving the great saltwater unknown:
Twenty years later...
But it's not all sadness and despair, guys! Think of all the friends Top is going to make in his new fish after life. He'll be derping around with all these happy critters:
And if you're still full of fishy ennui, just remember don't forget the best advice that Disney ever gave.
Images: Getty Images; YouTube(3); Giphy(6)
