last summer i decided that my 2 year-old daughter needed a pet. since her pop and i are both allergic (hate) cats and dogs - well, dogs require assistance taking a crap that i'm not willing to give - i decided to buy her fishies. in fact, i bought her 5 (!) fishies - each with his own name and personality. there was mr. orange, who was quite orange. mr. yellow, who was...ok, so they had lame ass names but at least i took those 23 seconds to name them and present them to my Very Excited daughter as such. she was beside herself with joy. fishies! real! live! fishies! i even got the moment on video. i felt like a Good Parent and went to bed that patting myself on the back and imagining all sorts of scenarios where my daughter the president/olympic hero/oscar winner made speeches to larry king thanking her mommy for believing in her and, of course, buying her fish as a toddler.

then one of the fish died. it happened less than 24 hours after putting him in the bowl. thankfully, bea wasn't good with counting so she didn't notice the drop from 5 to 4.

then one of the fish mysteriously disappeared. cannabilism is suspected.

then there were three. three happy fish who swam around and amused my daughter. oh the times we had with the fish. there was the time we, uh, watched them swim around. then the time we stayed up late...watching them...swim. admittedly, fish are fucking lame. they aren't even particularly pretty fish or exotic fish. in fact, they are 99 cent fish from wal-mart. but they are my daughter's fishies and she loves them. so much so that i moved the fishtank out of her room and into the kitchen and she never noticed. so much so that when i cried over having to leave them behind as we evacuated nola under threat of gustav, mother of all storms bea was all 'why you sad, mommy? what fishies?' incidentally, those fish stayed alive for a whole week without food or the special tank bubbler or lights. them fishies? hardy little bastards.

then one died. i have no idea why he died but one day we looked at the tank and he was floating along the bottom, not breathing. hmph. at least there are two more.

it took me a couple of days to get up the gumption to clean the tank and remove the carcass. i don't know if you've ever had to clean a fish tank but it really is a pain in the ass and, well, the other fishies didn't seem to mind the dead one (who eventually floated to the top). i like to think that i was allowing his friends an appropriate amount of time to mourn the loss of their tankmate.

i cleaned the tank on a tuesday. a cold tuesday. i put the two live fish in a measuring cup by the side, filled with fresh clean water. cold water. then i scrubbed the scum and lingering death juices from the tank, put in the special water drops that the guy at the pet store convinced me i needed and let the two fish back in the now clean tank water. cold water. they sort of...well, they sort of stayed really quiet and still and at the bottom, but they were breathing. i thought that maybe the cold water was a little bit of a shock and that they just needed some time to get used to the new water. i sprinkled some food, thinking that maybe food would be just the thing to get them moving again. no one moved. i checked and, yes, they were breathing so i left 'em alone. again, they were breathing. the fish were alive the last time i checked.

later that day...i was informed that the fish were dead. dead dead dead. i had killed the last two fish. i'm pretty sure i froze them to death but i maintain that it was accident. a sad sad unfortunate accident. i murdered my daughter's fish. but, hey, it's been a while since she noticed the fish so, yeah, it's cool. i thought briefly about replacing the fish but, meh - she hadn't mentioned the fish in months.

cue yesterday when my darling toddler proclaimed, 'mommy! someone took my fishies! where are my fishies!' well, fuck. i panicked and i swear the only thing i could come up with was to tell her that her fish were on vacation. naturally, this led to my writing a postcard 'from' her fish explaining to my daughter that they were away at disney world, having a lovely time. really. i wrote this on the back of a pluto christmas card. why i bothered to write this out for a kid who can't read yet? don't know. where this will end up? don't know. maybe the fish are destined to have a raucous round-the-world adventure. likely, i'll forget about it soon and the fishies will remain a distant memory in my toddler's brain only to be brought to the surface during regression therapy where some quack will explain to my daughter that the key to all of her psychological issues is that her mother lied to her at age 3 about what happened to her fishies.

you know where the fishies are not? they are NOT with the jolie-pitts.