Dead Goldfish

DEAD GOLDFISH

We want to assist the kids in learning. We want them to have fish. We wait until the day they come home from a play date, having seen a peers pet turtle, and ask for the turtle [or if your living in Boulder, a Red Necked Leaping Lizard who eats live Grasshoppers from Mongolia, sold only by the 4 ear-ringed proprietor of the alley pet shack open at random hours and smelling of Patchouli, sea salt & algae].

“Fish” of course, you answer. “A Goldfish.” Thus the balances, between helping our kids learn, and reducing the steady supply of feces this whole parenting scheme generates.

Caring for Fish is good for a 9 year old. She learns about creating an environment. Controlling it with adjusting chemicals and testing PH and ammonia. “What’s ammonia?” the 9 year old asks. “Pee., the fishes Pee” I answer. This is my passive aggression for all the years the kids left their feces in the toilet bowl for my unasked review of their excrement. ‘See! The price must be paid for Pee.!’

There is slow dulling of our personal cultural senses as we are forced, over the years, to view the human experience as hosts to these youngin’s, running around chewing carrots and oblivious to the mess we pick up in a never ending stupor.

“Just like my childhood” I joke to my Neighbor Andy, as he fishes through a box of Knee Protectors because our 6 year olds are complaining about the ‘fit’ as they roller blade. “Dad bending over, spending hours trying to find just the right sports gear for us.” “Right” Andy answers, “My dad would pull up to the 7-11 with our car full of 4 boys. We would ask, “Can we get something? He would give us his one squint-eyed no of a look ‘are you nuts?’, and disappear, returning with his pack of Camels .” My dad left before I turned Two, I just remember one day the long hairy tattooed arm was no longer stretched across the front seat of the car, and mom was driving.

Meanwhile we wait a day for the $80 worth of tank, filter, rocks and bubbling dinosaur head to settle and the water to warm and de-chlorofy. Then the $4.00 Pop-eye Goldfish is purchased and named “Lou Lou” for a friend gone to Europe, and placed in the tank, where it happily swims, frolics, eats food and nibbles the gravel until day 10, when it floats, normal but not moving, its orange/black/white skin turning whiter by the minute. Its dead, but the Pop-Eye’s still stare, and the 9 year old wants to know if it’s her fault between the tears.

Learning time again…..