Every time I used to ask for a baby brother or sister, my parents
would turn up the volume on the TV.

And this was before we had a TV with a remote control, so that walk to
the set would always be a really awkward five to eight seconds.

I was a happy kid, but would often get lonely. I remember one day, as
I sat in the back yard playing with my Army Geoff action figure, my
mom looked out the window at me. She didn't know I had seen her.

My dad approached her and put his arm around her shoulder.

"You know," he said to her, "Little Timmy's looking pretty lonely out there."

"You read my mind," my mother replied, passionately taking his hand into
hers.

The next day I had an aquarium.

And the sad thing is I was stoked. I even made up an aquarium song
where I assigned each of the letters in "aquarium" to a word. "A" was,
naturally, for "aquarium." I didn't have to think of anything for "Q"
because by that time the TV's volume drowned out any outside noise.

The aquarium became the first of many pet experiments my parents would
run on me. By the time I was 14, I would have a veritable Noah's Ark
of pets—except in my case, none of the pets survived longer than 40
days. Also, God generally disapproved of me.

My aquarium came with everything commonly associated with a generic
aquarium. This included a novelty, misspelled sign next to a tiny
chest that read "berryd trehzure," a broken, amputee scuba man who
would get stuck in the blue pebbles that lined the bottom and a couple
of those disgusting spotted fish that make faces on the side of the
glass. One time I made a face back at the fish and it said "Woh!...
Wow... OK, yeah sorry," before starving itself. Of glass.

I filled the tank with fish from only the most exotic of Wal-Marts. I
would take care of them by hugging them Michelle-Tanner style. I named
every fish. I fed them every time I got up to use the bathroom, which
was about 14 times a day. One day I found a crawfish outside and put
him in the aquarium. My fish had the best lives ever that week.

Next up was a painted turtle named Donatello. As soon as Dad and I
returned from the pet store, my mom started yelling. She freaked out
and said "Ugh! Dirty!" and accused me of making the house a trap for
salmonella. Then she noticed I had a turtle and really freaked out.

Donatello "escaped" a few days later. Being a stupid 5-year-old, I
totally bought it before distracted anyway upon the appearance of two
of my favorite pets, Philip and Jerrome. Philip and Jerrome were baby
chicks and were special because they came from the Easter Bunny. Who
apparently existed. And who apparently delivers chicks in upside-down
Bruce's Foods boxes. When the chicks, both dudes, got to that
objectionable "not-so-yellow-anymore" stage, we donated them to a
farm. Dad told me the drop-off point for this farm was the dumpster
behind Iberia Bank.

I'm going to skip over lame pets like the communal, neighborhood-owned
black cat named Midnight, which is really the name of every black cat
in the world, and go straight to Dixie. Dixie was a cocker spaniel who
was mildly retarded. I know this because though cocker spaniels
generally are easy to train, Dixie would take a dump following every
command. Dixie was originally an inside dog, but her psychotic,
untrainable mind forced her to become an outside dog. This followed an
incident in which Dixie escaped from her room, which is where we kept
her while we were at school and work.

One day, when I was about 8, moms and I returned home for the day and
immediately notice that Dixie's door was open. For some reason I
immediately thought bandits broke in. Bandits. To steal our retarded
dog. No such luck. Dixie apparently escaped at what could have only
possibly been at 8 a.m. to go on a psychotic eight-hour, crap-filled
rampage.

"Oh my God," my mother said, shielding her eyes. "There is shit
everywhere!"

I was more concerned that my Snickers bar, which was sitting on a
table in the living room that morning, was now neatly unwrapped and
missing one bite. This led me to believe that either Dixie did this
herself, or that my dad came home for his lunch hour to join in on the
crapstravaganza.

I haven't heard from my dad since. I assume he kicking it with
Donatello right now.

 ©2005 Tim Landry