When I was a kid and snow was magical instead of maddening, I had pet fish. I had tow tanks for a number of years, a smaller one with gold fish, and a larger one with tropical fish. The tropical tank had the usual assortment of mollies, neon tetras and algae eaters, whose antics I found endlessly fascinating (said antics consisted primarily of sticking to the glass via their sucker mouths or inexplicably chasing other fish). I also had some snails and occasionally an underwater frog mixed in.
Watching the fish was never as engrossing as a good video game (for example) because I was a kid with a kid-sized attention span, but it still was engrossing to just sit back and watch them silently moving through the tank. I wanted tanks as big as I could afford because I wanted the fish to feel less like they were trapped and more like they were just in a really tiny ocean.
As an adult I’ve never had fish but occasionally think of starting a tank again.
When I was exercising at the mall yesterday (see previous post) I went to a pet store that sells not just pet supplies but actual pets. There were rabbits (pee monsters), budgies (screech monsters) and an assortment of other furry critters. There were also tanks of fish, so for the first time in many years I actually stood and watched fish the same way I had as a kid, just with a bunch of other people pushing and shoving around me.
I saw a tank kit that came with some supplies. It looked about 20 gallons in size, though I neglected to check. “I wonder how much a tank costs now versus way back in olden times when I had one?” I said to myself, quietly so all the people around me wouldn’t think I was crazy. I looked at the price: $229. I wondered if maybe a decimal was in the wrong spot or something but no, the price was $229. That seemed like a lot of money for five panes of glass glued together with a few plastic plants thrown in.
Next I looked at the fish. The range seemed to be roughly $3 or so for neon tetras to around $10 for larger/fancier fish. This meant that stocking a good-sized tank would cost probably a hundred dollars or more. I remembered buying fish for about a buck each. Sure, that was back in 1976 and gas was also 29 cents a liter but I still felt some sticker shock. This is what happens when you stay out a market for 40 years.
Even so, I’m still tempted. There are times when watching fish glide though the water while the plants gently sway around them and the bubbles rise steadily behind would be a soothing, even pseudo-therapeutic experience. Until I had to clean the tank, anyway.
EDIT: Looking at this live fish page on the PetSmart website is making me want to set up a tank right this moment. There were a few things that I found intrinsically fascinating as a kid and fish were right in the middle of that list. In fact, here’s the list as best as I can remember it (there may be omissions and the list is not in any order):
- dinosaurs
- roller coasters
- fish
- sharks (yes, sharks are fish but they totally deserved their own entry)
- reptiles (modern-day dinosaurs in my mind)
- miniatures and models (model cars, trains, etc.)
- video games (it was early days and everything, even Pong, seemed terribly cool and futuristic)
- amusements parks (both going to them and just the general concept, especially themed parks like Disneyland)
- monorails (after riding them in Seattle and Disneyland)
- fire trucks. I still find them cool. I still can’t explain why.