Zoe vs. the Average Lifespan of the North American Carnival-Prize Goldfish

People think that when Dickens wrote "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times" he was inspired by the French Revolution, but that's not true. It's a little-known fact that months before beginning A Tale of Two Cities, he penned that line at an Amusements Faire after Charles Jr. won a goldfish on the midway.

I'm guessing that he also uttered some Victorian curse words. Because, though it may have caused his child joy, every parent knows there's no greater sorrow than your child winning a goldfish at a fair.

Last Friday, Zoe was off school for Rosh Hashanah, so naturally we went to a Greek festival, and there she saw that booth, you know the one, where you can win a goldfish if you throw a Ping-Pong ball into a bowl. I remember doing this as a kid. And most of the time, if the ball went in the bowl, it bounced right out again.

Zoe wanted to do it. The odds were she wouldn't win, but there was always a chance, so I shelled out the five bucks . . . and then silently rooted against my only child.

I lost, twice over, because Zoe won TWO goldfish.

My own checkered history with goldfish:

5 deaths, one by fire (I'm not making that up.)

Almost immediately I began preparing Zoe for their demise. Especially since we had a cat.

Let's call them Meal 1 and Meal 2, I said. She laughed. Luckily she had my dark sense of humor.

I said if they made it a week, we'd upgrade their names to Miracle 1 and Miracle 2. Oh, how we laughed!

When we got home, I filled the cheap tank I'd shelled out another ten bucks for with water and served up a pinch of that papery food they'd given us for "free" inside one of those mini plastic containers, the ones that usually hold the soy sauce you dip your sushi in. The irony was thick!

Saturday and Sunday

The whole weekend we were busy with the usual things, though I did change the tap water---some of you are already cringing---every day since I saw how quickly it was getting cloudy and hard to see the goldfish through the murk.

Though maybe it would've been better if they weren't visible, considering our cat Cooper's dishonorable intentions.*

Monday, 1 p.m.

While I ate my lunch at work, I looked up how to take care of God's most pitiful creations. Since they'd made it this far, I figured I'd get some tips. I made the mistake of going to an article on PETA's website, which is when I found out what a horrible person I was. 

You know those videos people take of their friends watching a scary movie with bowls of popcorn in their laps, or maybe watching an episode of Game of Thrones just before an upsetting death? This was me reading about taking care of goldfish.

First thing I discovered was that tap water was basically toxic for goldfish! I gasped and lurched back, spilling some of my metaphorical popcorn.

Tap water has chlorine and other chemicals that burn their gills. That meant that each breath they'd been taking since Friday was agony!

I read on and learned that when you changed the water you had to make sure the temperature change wasn't too shocking (gasp!)

And you shouldn't just dump them unceremoniously in a holding container and dump them back into the tank again because this stressed them out (!!)

And how about oxygen in the water? One way you could tell they were having trouble breathing was if they lingered near the top of the tank.

Metaphorical popcorn everywhere!

Was I an animal torturer? Would these goldfish be my gateway murders on the road to becoming a serial killer? 

According to PETA, these goldfish needed a bigger tank, about twenty different filters, and a daily measuring of PH balance. I was surprised they didn't also need mini-defibrillators and an on-call therapist due to all the stress.

The one thing they had going for them was that they had company. A buddy. Though as Cooper lurked nearby I imagined their conversations thusly:

Meal 2: OMG, that cat's looking at us again, Meal 1!

Meal 1: Why am I Meal 1? I think you're Meal 1.

Meal 2: Oh sure, you just can't wait to get rid of me. Gary warned me you were like this, but did I listen? No!

You may ask how I knew which one was Meal 1 and Meal 2. Well, Meal 2 was definitely more nervous than Meal 1. When Cooper came close to the tank, Meal 2 "reacted" by zooming around, on alert, while Meal 1 just kept still. Now I'm not sure which one's strategy was better, or if Meal 1's lethargy just meant it was closer to death.

Monday, 6 p.m.

I went to the pet store on the way home and bought a solution to add to tap water to remove chlorine.

Monday, 6:15 p.m.

I was too late. Meal 2 (or was it 1?) was dead.

Meal 1 (or 2) really needed therapy now, having spent however many hours swimming in a small tank with the corpse of its companion, and---though their relations had been strained of late---really only friend, floating above him.

Anyway I dumped the body in an unmarked grave, aka the trash, and changed the death water, adding a teaspoon of the pet store's solution.

Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

Meal 1 (or 2) was still alive! Could the solution be working?

Wednesday, 6:30 a.m.

No. Meal 1 (or 2) was dead.

Perhaps the solution hadn't worked or perhaps it had been too late.

Maybe Meal 1 (or 2) missed its friend, having spent the previous thirty-six hours alone but occasionally rushing into the glass, repeatedly mistaking its own reflection for Meal 2 (or 1), resulting in flashbacks about the hours spent with its corpse, all while each labored breath it took burned its gills.

As I watched Meal 1 float at the top of the tank, mouth open, expression stupid yet tragic, Zoe came in, and we had a teachable moment as she asked: "Is that what a dead fish looks like?"

I put my hand on her shoulder, patted it gently, and said, "Sure is, baby."

We lowered our heads. Because Cooper was rubbing himself against our legs. With a certain smugness, I felt.

Happier Times! Well, I don't know if the fish were happy,
so maybe . . . Alive Times!

Hopefully Meal 1 is now in a far far better place.

Metaphorically.

Literally, he or she's in the trash. Sorry, PETA. I tried. Sort of.

Zoe: 171; Universe: 0

*If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen my post about how we thought the tank was leaking, but it wasn't. We realized that, overnight, Cooper had gotten up on Zoe's dresser and batted the tank around, thus the water all over. So we moved the tank to our dresser instead because it was harder for Cooper to get to. And he really tried!

If you enjoyed this post, you may like Zoe vs. Her Spirit  Animal: Cultural Appropriation, Identity Crisis, or Playing Pretend?

For more of Zoe's hijinks, follow me on Facebook and on Twitter at @zoevsuniverse. 

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Zoe vs. Take Your Child to (Your Dickensian) Work Day

Treats of the place where Zoe's mother works, and of the circumstances attending Zoe's visit on Take Your Child to Work Day.

Among other skyscrapers in a certain metropolis, one I will refrain from mentioning, there is one particular to these environs which makes frequent appearance on picture postcards, and which many a visitor stands before for portraits due to its remarkable shape, to wit, a triangular office building; and in this office building was, last week, on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, as the exact date can be of no consequence to the reader, the event referenced in this diary entry's title, to wit, again, Take Your Child to Work Day.

For a long time after Zoe's mother signed her daughter up for this event, the wretched woman envisioned sorrow and trouble, and it remained a matter of considerable doubt in this pitiable lady's mind whether the child would or, more likely, would not behave, in which latter case, though the mother would be much beset with tremors and pains about the head, she would yet be furnished material for her blog.

Girl and mother arrived on the date in question in much haste, having met with those various and sundry inconveniences which are particular to the city's public transport system.

The day's programme began with a so-called Welcome Breakfast. Hale and hearty children gathered round a conference table, plying themselves with cakes and sweets, not an Oliver Twist in the bunch. Beside them their guardians, backs permanently bent from their labours, many of their brows furrowed beneath spectacles, imbibed that fortifying beverage so conducive to the average adult's functioning.

Soon after, the workday began, during which these innocents were to be led around the building and pressed into service. What burdens would be placed on these youthful shoulders? What degradations would they be subjected to? As a publishing house, would the proprietary interests undertake to harness this cheap labour and task these small hands to swab ink and clear paper from the winches of some Great Printing Machine that surely belched murky smoke somewhere out of sight, say, in the building's basement?

But this eventuality was avoided, for everything today is accomplished via digital engines and other thingamabobs. So instead the establishment presented the children with colouring books and crayons. The fiends!

For the first session the children were asked a question no Victorian-era foundling had ever been asked. "What would you like to be when you grow up?" Of course, it was little use to ask a poor Victorian child this question as their answer would most likely have been, "You mean if I survive to adulthood?"

In contrast, today's children, exposed to a grueling nine-to-five (by law) workday at a publishing house, were forced to write and illustrate a book about their prospective future vocation.

The child Zoe said, "A veterinarian." When pressed to come up with a title for her book she called it: "Veterinarian. By Zoe."

I added "Zoe is a" which she half-erased. And note
that her dedicating it to "mommy" was under duress
as at first she wanted to dedicate it to herself.

At the next session she was to make a cover for her book. Her mother inwardly grieved, fully expecting that her precious darling would now be exposed to the fumes of industrial strength adhesives but, huzzah!, this process was electronical too, using something called Adobe Creative Suite.

Thinking this a favourable moment the mother returned to her dark hole of a work space (the sun was on the other side of the building), where the window could not open (because there was an AC in it), to do some work.

Alas, as if she truly were a Victorian child without options, Zoe chose the first picture of a cat she saw and slapped it on the cover. This, from a child who never drew a picture of an animal that was not some sort of Frankenstein creation with horns and wings in colors unnatural and locations obscene. Nay, this time, and this time only: Orange cat, please! and done. And so the child was returned to her mother, who in the intervening two minutes had answered exactly one email.

Purrfect!

After lunch, where Zoe went without, by choice, because although hearty fare was provided in abundance she claimed a lack of hunger, probably because of her constant snacking on tiny orange biscuits in the shape of fish, she would take juice, though; however, as I was saying, after lunch the children were called up one by one. Was this to be a public flogging in front of their peers? A humiliating catalog of their weaknesses and faults? It was not. Instead, it was time for the children to promote and market their books, an inordinate number of which featured cats.

Following that they were lined up and brought to a conference room where there was a table covered with coffee filters, various dyes, and pipe cleaners. Surely the materials for the most grueling sort of child labour! But first they were treated to a view from the point of the building, presumably a merciful respite before being forced to toil until dark for a scrap of bread and a moth-eaten blanket.

Then, most happy surprise! The items on the table were the foundational elements for an art and craft. In short: Reader, they made butterflies.

The day's programme ended with a launch party and snacks. Zoe gobbled creme-filled chocolate biscuits, followed by jelly-like candies, then said, "Please, mother, may I have some more?" and her mother said, "Oh, sure, now you're hungry because it's candy and cookies, right?" And yet she capitulated, the burdens and cares of the day having beaten the wretch down.

It was 3 p.m., and the children's day was done. Their guardians still had two hours of work. They guided from the room their children, tiny faces dirty, hair plastered to foreheads due to unsanctioned and unnecessary dancing, hands covered in various dyes and marker residue, evidence of their grueling encounters with Art and Craft.

Not one of these statements is true.

Girl and woman returned to the mother's workhole, where the child commandeered the desk chair, for it had wheels, and swiveled, while the mother was left the hard guest chair, which had no wheels, and did not swivel.

Perhaps the child would like to colour while the mother worked? This being acceptable, the child requested a pink marker. But the mother had none. How about a pencil? She had: blue, green, vermillion, scarlet red, carmine red (a shade unparalleled in this narrator's opinion), lavender, rose, brown, and regular graphite no. 2 pencils. No pink markers.

The child's frown deepened. Her lower lip trembled. How she writhed in agony 'neath the yoke of this limit to her artistic integrity! Now how would she colour in Elsa's face? What child had ever suffered more in fiction or real life?

Would the mother get any work done now? Alas, twas too great an expectation.

Zoe: 134; Universe: 0

For more of Zoe's hijinks, follow me on Facebook and on Twitter at @zoevsuniverse. 

I need a win here, people. 

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