I Watched It Die

I am not what you would call a green thumb. I don't know how often plants need water or even if the water is supposed to be tap or drinking or distilled. Are you supposed to add extra dirt or is the stuff they come in enough? How much sun is too much? Even with all of these unknown variables I didn't think keeping a plant alive would be too difficult. After all in my last house there was a plant on top of the fridge that I am sure was never watered or move into more sun friendly environments (I think some of its leaves were even shut in the freezer a time or two) and it was just fine. I didn't want anything too big, just a plant I could keep in my room. It was nice enough looking and seemed to require very little attention. I guess I shouldn't say that...let me rephrase that last statement. It seemed to be staying alive with what little attention I was giving it. There were a few times that a leaf or two turned a little brown but I would put a little water in my cute yellow planter and life would be restored. But on this fateful day I am not sure what I did wrong. It was looking a little sad, possibly from lack of hydration so before I left for work I dumped in plenty of h2o (don't worry it wasn't swimming) and as a treat opened my blinds and placed it so it could get as much sunlight from my north facing basement window as possible. I went to work feeling so generous. How many other people do you know that let their plants have water and sunlight in the same day? But apparently it was too much too fast. The little guy didn't know how to handle it. It was looking so much worse when I got home there were even more brown leaves and they all seemed to droop slightly. I took it out of the sun  immediately and added a little more water. I had a thrilling night of watching Friends ahead of me so I put my plant back in its usual place on my DVD player popped in the DVD with the episode where Ross is sad about something and chandler makes a joke  Monica goes crazy about a mess and Joey doesn't understand what's going on. I'm sure you've seen that one anyway, about halfway through I glance over at my plant and I swear in the last 15 minutes it has taken a turn for the worse. As I sat there I literately watched my plant die from across the room I could see the core turn brown and spread its disease to all the leaves they drooped and turned black and there was nothing I could do. I know it was just a plant but I felt so helpless. So now I am left with an empty planter and still no knowledge of that to do to prevent the same fate for future planter dwellers.