As long as I can remember I’ve wanted a dog. In preschool when I was around three-years-old we had the assignment to write out our Christmas present wish list. A dog was at the very top of mine.
At first my wish for a dog might have just been the childish desire for one that many kids get, but my love of animals has never gone away. Unfortunately, my parents were never very interested in the work most pets, cats and especially dogs, entailed, especially as they knew that a child of my age wouldn’t end up taking any real responsibility for it.
My first real pet, then, was of the sort that is easy even for an elementary-aged child to look after: a fish. I actually got two fish at the same time, one goldfish and one beta. I loved the beautiful silvery-purple colors of the beta fish, but I couldn’t have more than one in the same tank. A goldfish is a classic pet fish, especially for a kid.
The names of these two fish are lost to time. In fact, of all of the pet fish my brother and I went through I can only remember the appellation of one of them, the one sturdy goldfish whose lifespan outlasted all of the rest by close to a year, and who survived the heart-rendering stress of the hours a day my cat would spend with his face plastered to the tank.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My true first pet, or pets, were my original beta and goldfish years earlier. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven when we got them, if I was even that old, and I remember they lived in a small in width but tallish tank that we perched on top of the dresser in my bedroom.
I couldn’t play or cuddle with my fish so I got involved in their lives in the only other way I could, decorating their tank with whimsy. I was enamored by the neon multicolored mixes of pebbles I could buy for their tanks, and I always filled the bottom of their habitat with some eye-watering shade of pink, yellow, or blue.
Bright pebbles weren’t enough, however. I gathered as many little fake fern plants and silly “This Way to Atlantis” signs as my tank would allow without seeming too cluttered and lovingly arranged them for my fish. I wanted them to feel at home.
To my parents’ credit they made me take as much responsibility for my fish as I could. I was in charge of feeding them, and I helped my mother clean out their tank once a month. My job was to net and transfer my fish to their temporary home while my mother carried the tank downstairs. She’d dump out the water and the old pebbles, but I had to help scrub the tank itself and refill it.
I can’t remember how long my fish lived. Probably not too long, as I don’t think I had that many fish until I got bored of them. I remember the solemn funeral we held in the upstairs bathroom for my first fish, as we said something we liked about the fish before commending its body to the great commode in the sky.
While I never really liked fish enough to keep getting them as pets, I remember having a pleasant experience with them as my first foray into animal ownership. Do you remember your first pet?
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*(This image by swearinglibrarian is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)