Yup, I'm A Fish Killer

I haven't felt much like blogging lately, mostly because I've been too busy killing my fish.

We acquired some goldfish four years ago. Note that I did not use the phrase "happily purchase." I "won" two of them at a county fair, which means that I won a chore and the right to buy more stuff, which is really like losing. Indeed, the carny who "awarded" me the fish tried selling me the World's Smallest Aquarium. I said no. We went to a pet shop and bought what I considered a decent-sized, 10-gallon aquarium to fit the teeny goldfish I had procured. The salesman sighed when he sold us the tank and said we were the 10th people to come in from the fair that day.

The goldfish were more fun than I thought, but then they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And eventually I realized that there was more fish than water in the tank. So we went on Craigslist and got a bigger tank. And another fish -- one to eat all the algae. And we moved the tank to our living room, where we don't have a television. It sits in front of our couch, and instead of watching networks bottom-feeding for viewers we watched our fish feeding from the bottom of our tank.

All was well. Our fish kept growing and eating and we were proud that, unlike 98 percent of domestic goldfish, these didn't end up being toilet fodder within the first six weeks of ownership.

But then I noticed something that I didn't think should be happening: water dripping from the top of the tank. The tank's filter style is known as an Eclipse, though don't ask me what the blocking of the sun's light by the moon has to do with aquarium water filtration. In any event, the filter sits above the tank, and has a proclivity for leaking water along the side of the tank. Given that our water contains more minerals than a rock garden, the result was some nice lines of calcium deposits along the back of the tank that required the use of a jackhammer to get off (which is tough work on a glass tank).

And this new tank had also become too small for our goldfish, which had grown to be about eight inches. (I would later discover that the tank I bought was 50 percent smaller than the size the tank's original owner told me it was -- yet one more reason why I hate Craigslist.) Apparently, goldfish can grow to be the size of a 1973 Dodge Dart and their emissions are just as bad -- making the tank a small, messy, drippy place. So we had to buy yet another tank.

Some people keep buying bigger televisions every two years. We buy bigger fish tanks.

We found a big tank on sale. Then we found a stand to go with it. We also let The Boy pick out all new decorations, and given that he has no concept of money we ended up spending more on the decorations than on the tank itself. We got the tank ready, and then talked to our fish excitedly about their new home, because giant goldfish can apparently understand everything we say. After waiting a day, we put them in.

And then one died the next day.

The other goldfish lasted a few more days, though those days were spent at the bottom of the tank, not eating, and just looking like he was dead.

Our third, algae-eating fish lasted a few more days after that. And then he, too, went to that big toilet in the sky.

And it was all my fault.

I just assumed that the fish would enjoy a nice, clean tank. I also assumed that goldfish were bulletproof, and mine had withstood four years of my poor tank-cleaning habits. But my goldfish had grown so accustomed to the nasty water in their small tank that they couldn't bear to live in a big tank full of crystal clear water. They had about the same reaction as a teenage boy who comes home to discover a clean room -- only they're fish and the shock killed them.

This is what happens when a person is thrust into pet ownership. We had no clue what to do with the items we just won. In my case, my fish lasted four years before my pet stupidity did them in. Of course, I also had four years to look this all up on the Internet.

So, armed with a new tank and no live fish, we actually read about fish, tested our water and picked varieties that wouldn't get big and that wouldn't die easily and preferably wouldn't eat any other fish in the tank. And then we got pygmy frogs because they're cool, but then the frogs spent all of their time hiding before they both died (one unfortunately got caught in the filter and didn't quite recover, and I have no idea what happened to the second). So then we got shrimp, and now they're the ones hiding.

Given my recent fish owner track record, hiding is probably a good idea.

Watch Out For Falling (And Running) Children

I have lots of fears, as I'm sure most people have. I fear that my zipper is down every time I have to get up in front of a crowd. Whenever I leave the house, I fear that I left the garage door open, a fear that has a tendency to ruin vacations (I never have, by the way). And I'm dreadfully afraid of dropping my kid.

I was afraid of infant fumbling long before my DNA helped form a child-making partnership in my wife's uterus. I have nieces who are now in their 20s. I held those nieces. And each time I treated that baby as if it were an egg with a nitroglycerin yolk. I treated The Boy the same the first time I held him, convinced that one false move and he would plummet to his certain doom.

Over time, I gained confidence in my baby-holding abilities. I gained enough, in fact, that I could swing him up into the air or carry him with one arm while holding something else, like the mail or my lunch box or a giant turkey leg. And the confidence became important, because once the baby discovers mobility, he frequently wants to be anywhere but your arms. And so he frequently tries to remove himself from your clutches, often by bending like a rubber band in a direction that no other human can bend.

(Seriously: Do toddlers have extra joints in their backs that enable them to bend all the way backwards when being held in the air by a standing parent? I swear my toddler can touch the back of his head to his butt sometimes ...)

Regardless, because you have that fear in the back of your mind, or at the forefront, your first focus is on keeping that kid locked tightly. And I had managed to avoid any child-carrying mishap.

Until today, that is.

I was taking The Sequel into day care. He is fully capable of walking on his own, but the combination of moving cars and a fully mobile toddler can be hazardous to the health of the toddler and the parent. In addition, he usually likes to remove his hat on cold winter mornings, making me want to get to the building quickly, though on this day he put the hat back on himself -- backwards, and tilted toward the back, though well enough that he smiled proudly at his efforts.

To get to the building, you have to walk about 100 feet down a sidewalk that goes past some parking spots. It can be a surprisingly treacherous walk -- not because of ice or the lawyers who have nearby offices, but because of the high frequency of running children. But I carried him in, and I talked with him along the way.

And then I heard a "stop" behind me, and I ran into something small, tumbled forward, and fell to the ground. As my knee hit I dropped The Sequel, who hit the back of his head on the sidewalk.

My first thought was something along the lines of this: UUUUUUUUUUGH! I DROPPED MY KID AND HE'S HURT REAL BAD!

That was also my second thought, and third thought. Suddenly, that fear of dropping my child came out at once and I pretty much started screaming and asking if he was OK. But The Sequel began screaming, too, which I took as a good enough sign to quickly get him inside.

As it turned out, one of my fellow parents had allowed her child to run ahead of her. The kid entered my blind spot -- the area between my eyes and the ground that is blocked by my toddler when I'm holding him. I tripped over him and fell.

I was angry, at first, and then I realized that if I had a nickel for the number of times my own children nearly took out some wandering adult at the knees because of their careless running, I'd have a nice retirement fund.

Still, for my efforts, my kid got a nice lump on the back of his head, but he was OK. The hat, and the winter gear that makes him look like a linebacker every January, kept the tumble from being a lot more serious.

Me? Sometime later I looked down and realized that my knee took the brunt of the fall. My pants were torn and bloody. I had a nice, juicy strawberry on my left knee. It looked awesome. So if anybody asked what happened, I just said that my knee saved my kid from the concrete of doom.