And All I Really Wanted Was a Dog...
Check it out!!! They follow my finger on the glass!
Goldfish:
When you were a kid, you probably wanted a dog as a pet. Your parents either already had one of these creatures, eventually gave in and got you one, or flat out refused. My parents went for the third option. Then again, I can't blame them - I wasn't going to be the one picking up dog shit all day.
My parents have never had much faith in my competence. Any (real) pet is an expensive endeavor, and they knew that I would kill it. My loving parents instead decided to get me pet food . Everyone knows that big fish need to eat little fish, and little fish are cheap. My dad cleverly bought a ziploc full of feed-fish for his marlin or shark or whatever he told the pet store owner he was feeding. I was so excited - I even got to hold the bag during the car trip home.
Man did I kill those! I started out with thirteen meals-with-fins in my ridiculously large tank. It was going good for about the first fifteen minutes. It wasn't until the third one floated to the top that my parents considered that they might not like tap water (oops). Back then, I didn't know any better, so I thought they were sleeping or doing the backstroke or something. Over the following month, seven more decided to take a nap.
That left me with 3. These were the Indestructibles. Over the next 7 years, these fish went through it all. Even the inevitable truth that they were food did not interfere with their will to live. I forgot to feed them, I fed them too much, I made it too hot, I made it too cold, and I did pretty much everything else I wasn't supposed to. Upon returning from one vacation many years ago, I went to my room to see the results of my self-dissolving auto-feeding tablet. To my horror, the once clear water was a chalk-white haze. In amazement, I saw that the fish were ALIVE!
After syphoning out the nasty water and replacing it with something more transparent, the fish were still swimming around. Their irregular diet over the previous week did have its dietary consequences, though. Thinking that my fish were laying "eggs," I poked around for a net so as to keep them from being sucked into the filter. I did not find out until later that it was just some funny looking fish shit.
Upon moving 3 years ago, those damn fish endured yet another hardship. I had to catch them with a net and place them these tiny jars to bring them to my new house. They swam continuously into the walls of their bottles and got pretty messed up. Nobody ever said fish were smart.
Since then, two of the three Indestructibles have passed on. I never thought I would see the day. My mom, thinking that I would want to bury #2, fished out the body while I was at school. I was shocked, to say the least, when I came home to find a dead fish in a ziploc baggy waiting for me. I am not THAT sentimental about saying farewell to my fish. I settled for flushing him.
That leaves one. Rather than just calling him my fish, I decided to affectionately name him Fish. He's still swimming around, staring at me with those lazy eyes of his even as I write this. Perhaps there can be only one true Indestructable. It is as if he is saying "Bring it on - I can take it." I, for one, believe him.
-SKILLET-
DON'T KILL REAL FISH - KILL FAKE ONES
GO BACK HOME
