Baby had a special place on top of my sister’s bed. I had my eye on Baby, a plush doll with a huge head, almost like a pillow, very soft, for hugging. It had orange curly hair and sea-blue plastic eyes. It intrigued me. A fat little doll shoved in a shimmering mermaid outfit that crinkled when you touched it. I wanted it. Not to play with. But to torture.
One Saturday morning, I decided what I should do.
“Let’s put Baby in the toilet.”
Melissa looked up from our Saturday morning cartoons.
“What for?” She was intrigued.
Of course she was. This was brilliant. The toilet was where you pooped. Poop had a power over us. We told poop jokes. Our dog, Spritzy, loved poop the most. She ate it straight from the cat’s litter box. You could tell when she did it because her lips would be lined with cat litter crumbs.
“Because it will be funny,” I said.
I wanted it. Bad. To see that fat plush face staring hopelessly out from the bowl.
Melissa looked skeptical.
“I don’t want Baby to stink,” she said.
“You’re a goody-goody,” I said. We secretly whispered curse words just to try them out, and we regularly called each other names that involved bodily functions or insulted intelligence, but calling someone a “goody goody” was slinging the heavy stuff.
“Am not.”
“Yes huh you are,” I said.
Melissa turned off the TV.
“Come on, let’s try it,” I said.
I had never put toys in the toilet before. I threw them, I submerged them in the pool, and I duct-taped them to the skateboard and sent them down the stairs. In fact, putting a toy in the toilet was a world-first. No one had ever thought of it before. The toilet was the last taboo. I grabbed Baby off the bed and we marched into the bathroom.
“You can’t tell,” I said.
Melissa promised.
I dropped it in. Plop. Now the toilet seat crowned Baby’s enormous head. It was funny. Baby was in the potty. We giggled. But then Baby’s enormous head began taking in water like a waterlogged ship.
“Uh oh,” Melissa said. We watched the doll absorb the water in the bowl. She was worried. I was, too. I did not anticipate this. Putting Baby in the toilet was great, but taking her out meant she was going to drip water everywhere. Poop water. I panicked.
“Take her out! Take her out! She’s going to stink,” Melissa said.
“Shhh,” I hissed.
Then we heard a rustle. God no. Not this. Not now. I should have known. Shhhs woke my father. He had a supersonic hearing for them. Things couldn’t get any worse. Then Melissa dropped the bomb.
“I’m telling,” she said.
It was too late. Footsteps were coming up the stairs. He heard us. I was going to be in huge trouble. First count, Baby in the toilet, misdemeanor. Second count, waking Dad. Felony. I could also be convicted on a lesser charge of tormenting little sister. The footsteps thundered down the hall. There was no time to take out Baby. I closed the toilet seat, enveloping Baby in poop darkness.
My father stopped in front of the bathroom, squinting in, still half-asleep. He wore his boxers and an old paint-covered t-shirt.
“Kids, I gotta use the bathroom. You almost done?”
He hadn’t heard. He wasn’t here to yell. He was just here to pee. I looked at Melissa. She stayed quiet.
“Almost,” I said.
He walked into the kitchen. I grabbed the hanging bathroom towel and pulled Baby out, wrapping her up. I rushed her into the bedroom and Melissa was right behind me. We shut the door and laid Baby out on the floor, examining the body. She was soaked through like a wet rag.
“You gonna tell?”
Melissa thought about it. She knew this was big. We had put Baby in the potty.
“No,” she finally said. She was a loyal sidekick. “But I don’t want it anymore. It stinks.”
Together we shoved Baby under my bed. All the way against the wall. Melissa was smaller and was able to squeeze under the bed to push her back all the way. Sometimes, we lifted up the bed skirt to take a look at Baby’s huge head rotting there with dust bunnies and astray game pieces, but mostly, we didn’t talk about it again. Baby was a goner. Miss her. Miss her.
We camped a few summers when I was a kid. I’m not sure if my parents actually enjoyed camping or whether they endured it in their efforts to create family memories for me and my sister. My parents did try hard to instill lasting memories in us, always dragging us to Civil War battlefields and random rock exhibits, threatening that we’d better “enjoy it or we’d never get to go anywhere again” if we dare complained in the backseat.
But as hard as they might have tried, I don’t have warm memories of Mom and Dad around the campfire. I don’t remember the first time they showed me how to make a Smores. I don’t remember shaking Jiffy Pop over an open flame. What I do remember is my sister got a tick. She was one of those bad luck kids, always getting bit by things like jellyfish and bees and the mean horse at the pumpkin patch. Horses are assholes. But the tick was the worst—a bloodsucking image seared forever into my brain, partially-burrowed under the skin of her scalp, it’s ripe butt sticking out and engorged.
So why the hell am I going camping, again? What if I get a tick? Lyme disease? It has a 14 day incubation period. How will I know if I have it? Should I shave my head? Do I need some sort of anti-venom? What about mosquitoes? West Nile? What about freaking bears? WHAT ABOUT SHOWERING.
I’m too neurotic for this. I’m a fretter, like my mother. I thrive in grey areas. I enjoy metaphorical language. I’d rather do the essay question than the multiple choice. I’d rather bullshit my way through instead of knowing the exact answer. I prefer a little flourish. I delight in a little drama. These are horrible camping skills.
My father, on the other hand, is the kind of guy who has a frustratingly simple, clear-cut solution for everything. He isn’t the kind of guy to research Lyme disease. He doesn’t need to. He always knows someone from high school who it happened to. He doesn’t wring his hands. He doesn’t consider multitudes. He simply gets a butterknife and cuts the tick off your head.
“You’ll be alright, kid,” he said to my sister. Somehow, it was always true. He put a baseball cap on her, and handed her a soda.
The girlfriend and I were going camping. I needed to prepare. Camping needs supplies. I excel in this area. I’m a better shopper than the girlfriend. Back in the day, I put years in as a retail employee. It takes a vet to cut through the clutter and extract out the bargains. Oh yeah, it’s a jungle. The first thing I purchased was this fifty-two quart cooler.
I fantasized about my future together with this cooler. Not just for camping, but for one day when we have a deck and parties. I’d keep that cooler fully stocked and ice cold. Nothing’s better than reaching into a cooler for an ice cold beer outside in the sunshine. I love the feeling of lugging a ten pound sack of ice, hugging the coldness to my chest, ripping open the plastic, and pouring it into the cooler, hearing the ice clatter against the cans.
I fantasized taking it tailgating to Ravens games—even though we’re not season ticket holders, and even though I wouldn’t want to drink at eleven AM on a Sunday in a parking lot in the winter. Still. The cooler contained possibilities. A path to a house with a deck, a path to lots of friends drinking in the sunshine, a path to season tickets and eleven AM drinking.
“We already have three coolers,” the girlfriend said.
The other three coolers I own are small, the kind you take to the beach to hold a couple of sodas. This one was the party van of coolers.
“You should have at least bought one with wheels,” she said.
Pffft. Wheels. That would be like a child safety seat in the backseat. Why don’t we also pack some baggies of Chex mix and some grape juice boxes for the babies? This is the party van. It’s for beer and raw meat ONLY. It doesn’t need training wheels. I want to do things the hard way. I don’t want to tweely roll it to the camp site. I want to experience this. I’m a neurotic writer who’s about to spend two days in the woods. I want to carry it in a sweaty, stumbling, brute-force kind of way.
“Whatever. And you don’t even eat meat.”
Beer and tofu doesn’t have the same ring to it. Which brings me to the next thing on my list. Tofu Pups. Tofu Pups are the adorable-sounding vegan cousin of hot dogs. The same fun hot dog shape we all love, without the hooves and ass. I’m going to kick these up Emeril-style with fancy Horseradish Mustard. I know camping should be about eating hooves cooked over a flame, topped with classic French’s Yellow, but I’m just not ready for that next step, yet.
While I’m in the grocery store, I also pick up a case of bottled water, a case of soda, and a case of beer. It works out to forty two beverages for two people for two nights, which means we are each rationed 10.5 drinks per day. Do I think we’re going to drink this much? Do I think I will become crippled with an insatiable thirst for Miller Lite that has sat in a tub of melting ice next to TOFU PUPS? Do I think lost, dehydrated campers might suddenly surround our campsite attacking us with sticks?
That would be absolutely terrifying.
I’m not sure what I’m thinking. About this whole camping thing. And what to do if I get a tick. I guess I’ll be alright. Somehow, it’s always true.
The backyard was once a frontier land, a blank canvas that could be anything. The swing set had the end swing for two people. It was a rocket ship. We got on and shot off to Mars. Suddenly it was pitch black outside. We could see the stars up close. So this is what outer space was like, where there was no gravity. We bounced cautiously through the strange atmosphere hunting for aliens. We found canyons over by the gate. This needed further investigation. I heard a sound. I reached for my ray gun from the holster. It was the light gun from the Sega Genesis tucked into my shorts. I looked over my shoulder to my sister, who was reaching for her ray gun, too–the Nintendo light gun.
Then my mother called us in for lunch. We left Mars and scurried to the kitchen.
We all have that place we once called home. But we grew up. Without realizing it, the gates at the shuttle closed to us. It was just a backyard again. Just grass that needed mowing. Just earth and dirt and dog poop, and that cornered-off area where we miserably failed at planting tomatoes last summer.
The girlfriend and I have been house hunting. It’s a daunting decision to buy a house, but we’ve convinced ourselves its the right decision by making nervous affirmative statements about interest rates and the smart investment of real estate. However, the true reason we’re house hunting—the gut-level, emotion-driven reason—is because we’re sick to death of washing dishes by hand. Our cramped apartment has a queen mattress shoved in the closet and a weight bench in the bedroom serving as clothes-drying rack, but its the dishes that are draining our very life force.
And so we’ve been looking. And I can always tell when the girlfriend doesn’t like a place when we get back into the car and she begins repeating the word no.
“What made you think to put this place on our list?”
I thought she’d be temporarily blinded by the huge swimming pool in the backyard to notice the original shag carpet on the inside. Trust me, the shag carpet didn’t add any sort of charm or character. The ad mentioned that the place needed “a little TLC.” Which actually means it needs to be completely gutted.
We’re learning. In a woozy, hesitating, marching-forward sort of way, we’re learning.
I have been thinking about my grandmother’s house. After she died a few years ago, we sold her house. A young couple bought it as their first home. I picture them walking through that first time and seeing the possibilities. Where picture frames would sit perfectly on that ledge, how the couch might fit, and where the pool would go in that big back yard.
My grandmother lived in a house in Glen Burnie Park. I remember the smell of chicken baking in the oven, and my grandmother in her blue button-up smocks which she wore from her retail job, and still wore around the house even years after she retired. She always smelled like Pond’s hand cream. The secret, she confided in me, was to put some on your face as well to reduce wrinkles.
“But you don’t need to worry about wrinkles,” she would say, touching my face admiringly.
As a kid, I loved her house, full of weird objects, old books and wax fruit and things. The fake grapes were the best because when you pinched them, they gave just a little, and that was satisfying enough. There was the hand-strengthener tool that my grandmother explained she used every morning to keep her grip strong. But she couldn’t squeeze it much, and neither could I. Still, I loved to try.
At Christmas, my grandmother put out the decorations, and I looked forward to them each year, as though I were seeing old friends. There were a trio of ceramic elves with mischievous painted-faces. Something as breakable as ceramic elves would have been off-limits at home, but nothing was off-limits in my grandmother’s house.
I never broke the elves as I moved them from the end table to the carpet to the coffee table. Each December the elves went on fantastic adventures through the living room while my grandmother hummed along with Nat King Cole on the radio and wished she could whistle like my grandfather.
“Your grandfather could whistle any song,” she said. There was a sadness in her voice, but it was a sweet sort of sadness that was also comforting, just like those old songs on the radio. I pushed the ceramic elves under the couch. They were in a cave now.
She also had a lot of wind-up decorative ornaments. A couple sitting together on a park bench turning slowly to a delicate version We’ve Only Just Begun. Snow White kissing Dopey to the tune of Someday My Prince Will Come. A red bird that played a song no one could identify anymore. I moved from ornament to ornament, winding each one carefully, getting them all going at once.
I always packed a few action figures and coloring books to spend the night at my grandmother’s, but I never needed them. There were wax grapes to finger. The hand strengthener to give a few squeezes. A tuneless symphony to conduct with the wind-ups. When I finished that, there were the stacks of old-lady magazines like Redbook and Woman’s World. I liked to read the advice columns.
Each magazine had their own generic columnist like Meg or Judy—no Ann Landers, that’s for sure. I would read the problem and then in my mind I’d try to imagine the advice I would give, though I could never think of anything, since I didn’t understand the problem in the first place. And yet the advice always seemed sound, a solution.
My grandmother also had a large collection of Readers Digest books, which she special-ordered from the ads in the magazine, thinking they might make an interesting read. She had the Princess Diana Life Story, picture books of the Kennedys, a book about diseases. But the one that always caught my eye was MYSTERIES OF THE UNEXPLAINED.
The book had stories about babies spontaneously-combusting, ghosts appearing in dead women’s hand mirrors, and tales of all the mysterious lights that were seen over deserts sometime long ago. Parents today worry about kids getting screwed up by video games, television, computers, and diets of sugar and meat. But what they should really worry about screwing up children is books. This book scared the shit out of me. I laid sprawled out on the floor, shaking while reading this tome of evil. Even the cover creeped me out with a strange, orange, circular light. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading it.
As I grew up, I became bored with the advice columns, even though my grandmother still saved the stacks of magazines for me. The elves became ceramic figures again. I forgot about the Readers Digest books on the bookshelf. Instead, I watched TV and chatted about work and college. I could squeeze the hand strengthener now, and she didn’t try anymore. She still touched my face, and her hands were older and frailer.
After my grandmother died, my parents began cleaning out the house, and invited me to take things I wanted while they were still there. I didn’t even want to step in the house. It hurt too much. I refused to realize the permanence of it. That one day, all of it would only exist in my mind. Moving and taking things made it seem real. Leaving them made it seem like they might always stay there, unchanged.
I only took one thing. I grabbed The Mysteries of the Unexplained book, and left. It wasn’t even a sentimental choice. I had no desire to be sentimental then. I just thought I’d like to read it that night.
Published in 1982, it’s still everything I want it to be. Black and white pictures, bizarre illustrations, big words. An encyclopedia of zombies, ghost slaves, aliens, Satan, hauntings, and creepy dead children. If it ain’t in here and cheesily illustrated, it didn’t happen. I LOVE THIS BOOK. I’m fortunate to have saved it.
The house belongs to the young couple now. It is their stories and memories and threads of life that interweave through it. The old threads do not stay behind. We carry them with our bodies or they simply dissipate through the air. Markings on the walls are painted over; the stickers stuck to mirrors are scrubbed off with goo remover. The children we were are now adults.
And now we look at houses that might belong to us. I look at the backyards, which might one day be a moonscape when we have a child. We look at houses, and I wonder if these walls could contain us, our things, our lives for now, those years when we were young. We look at houses, and then I think about how nice it would be to have a dishwasher.
ALF was once a cultural phenomenon. The television show lasted four seasons, and like any kid-centric 1980s craze, there were comic books, video games, a Saturday morning cartoon, and even a made-for-TV movie. Before it was over, ALF had his own parade floats on Thanksgiving, late-night show appearances on Letterman, and toys that caused tramplings on Black Friday.
And so this leads me to the ALF board game. Forget trampled customers and Letterman—nothing says you’ve made it unless you have your own hastily thrown together board game with cheesy artwork.
I have to tell you—I don’t love ALF. I have a tragic ALF story. It seems a lot of us do. Come forward. It’s okay. You’re safe here.
There was certainly a lot to love about ALF. He was an adorable, furry space alien from the planet Melmac. Crash-landing into that other Tanner family house, ALF became a beloved member of the family, crash-landing into everyone’s hearts. (I could write this stuff for a living.)
ALF’s favorite food was cats and he had a fondness for Hawaiian-print shirts. Part of the show’s power was that it had a serious side as it explored issues of culture shock, survivor guilt, and the perils of nuclear war. ALF, you see, came to earth after Melmac was destroyed in nuclear holocaust.
Alright, never mind. This was a show whose star was a ragged-looking puppet. It was 1980s bizarreness at its best. Like I said, a lot to love—and I liked ALF well enough. I didn’t miss a single episode in the first season. But something came between me and my love for ALF: the ALF doll.
It seems like just a blip now, those few weeks leading up to Christmas 1986, when the Coleco plush ALF doll was the most sought-after toy in all of planet Earth. Like absolutely every other child, I wanted one. I stared longingly at the ALF doll in the toy store, twenty ALFs in a row, staring back at me from the shelf. I hoped my mother would see the look, the mist in my eyes, and then she would say, “do you want me to buy you that?”
The staring tactic never actually worked—not once—and makes me wonder why I still deployed that tactic so often. Next, I tried my telepathic-psychic thoughts which I beamed to Santa, and included in my prayers at night. But praying to Santa never actually worked either. Why did I keep trying it? It was simply my personality. You know, I never actually win those scratch-off tickets either, and yet I keep buying them.
There was one tactic that always worked, and yet, it just didn’t seem worth it to begin a merciless, begging, all-out vocal crusade for the doll. After all, it was still a doll. It’s not like this was an actual, real-live ALF–because an actual, real-live ALF would have been worth throwing myself in front of traffic in the Toys R Us parking lot. I’d break myself free from my mother’s hand and catapult myself towards the nearest car. I bet they would have totally given me a free toy of my choice if I crippled myself for life in front of the store. If not, I had the Make A Wish Foundation phone number committed to memory. Those kids were so lucky, getting everything they wanted.
But for an ALF doll, essentially a glorified baby doll? No, this wasn’t Make-A-Wish level stuff. I’d save it for that doll with the stretchy-rubber arms. I stuck to praying and staring.
I never got the ALF doll. So much depends upon getting The Main Toy that will forever shape the love in your mind. My heart closed off to ALF after that. I had no interest in the animated series or the trading cards. I looked away when I saw a novelty ALF suctioned to a rear windshield.
Tears and violins. Perhaps then I didn’t deserve to find this near mint-condition ALF Board Game, complete with the pieces unpunched on the cardboard. But even the coldest of hearts couldn’t look away for three bucks.
TV-based board games were a dime-a-dozen, all of them exceedingly simple and probably not much fun to play. Here the game pieces are nothing more than four of the same ALF picture with different-colored backgrounds. Each of four players chooses their ALF color. The Mrs. O piece moves on the board according to insanely complex rules, and if your ALF lands on her space, you probably die an instant, spontaneous-bleeding, brain-swelling death, because that old lady looks EVVVIIIILLLL.
The directions seem overly simple, and yet overly complicated at the same time. I’ve read them about four times, and I still have no idea how to play. I loathe reading board game instructions. Here’s an excerpt:
“You may move the Mrs. Ochmonek pawn either forwards (clockwise) or backwards around the game path. You may not move her onto the START space, or a space with a family member. If you move Mrs. Ochmonek onto a space with an ALF pawn, Mrs. Ochmonek has seen ALF and he must run back to hide behind a family member. This means that the ALF pawn Mrs. Ochmonek sees must move back along the path, stopping at the first family member space it comes to. If there is more than one ALF pawn in the space, each ALF pawn that Mrs. Ochmonek sees must move back to hide behind a family member.”
There’s about four other paragraphs regarding the movement of the old lady pawn. It’s too many things to remember. I imagine every roll of the dice needing to consult with the directions to see what can move where.
Here’s a closer look at the board:
Even if the game skimped on actual game play, they did put an impressive level of detail into the board. That’s the thing with these board games from the 1980s—you never want to play them, but you want to frame the board. But here’s a confession: I don’t like playing board games. I’m a mean board game player, which is sort of like being a mean drunk.
If I’m not winning the entire time, I’m bored, and if I’m hopelessly losing, I quit. I have a bad attitude. While I’ve never actually flipped the board over, brushed all the pieces on the floor, and stormed from the room, I’ve threatened it. If nothing else, I cheat terribly. I turn Board Game night into Hate Game night. I’m just a jerk.
I suspect the ALF game could induce an ALF rage. Or possibly a Mrs. Ochmonek rage. Then again, I have a lot of issues with ALF. And in general, I probably just have issues.
But don’t tell me this face won’t keep you awake at night in a cold sweat.
“Guess what sweetheart? We’re having Sea Monkeys!”
That’s what I imagine announcing to my fiancee over a candlelit dinner, as I drive home with my brand new Ocean Zoo Sea Monkey kit. Becoming a Sea Monkey parent is never a planned process. It’s somewhat accidental–an impulsive buy in the toy store. And I have no idea what I’m getting into. “But we’ll learn together,” I’ll say.
“I do not want to live with those things,” is her response, when I get home.
“It’s for the blog,” I say. She’s generally supportive of these things if I tack on the words for the blog. “Besides, maybe I could write something really meaningful about them.”
“They’re still gross.”
She bluffs. I know she’ll like them once she sees how cute they are–whatever they are.
Sea Monkeys are a type of brine shrimp that can live in a state of suspended animation for decades through a process known as cryptobiosis. In nature, cryptobiosis is an evolutionary state allowing organisms to survive indefinitely until environmental conditions return to being hospitable.
I don’t get that. How do Sea Monkeys work? Time travel, I think.
Brine Shrimp can be bought in tropical fish stores in tubes by the thousands to be raised as fish food. But here in the Ocean Zoo kit, these brine shrimp are marketed to children as instant, easy-to-care-for pets renamed “Sea Monkeys.” The kit comes with a small plastic tank, water purifier, growth food, and a packet containing a more manageable seventy-five brine shrimp eggs.
I had Sea Monkeys as a kid, though my memories are not happy. I remember sitting in the kitchen and dumping the packet of instant life into the water. But they did not instantly appear and put on a show for me. Instant life did not equal instant fun.
“Let’s give them a few days,” my mother said, as we stared together at the container of still tap water.
And I remember staring sadly into the tank for days on end, waiting for the adorable little Sea Monkeys to appear, to swim and to dance. I was certain they could dance. The instructions said that you could even teach them to do tricks by training them with a flashlight, and I was ready whenever they were, flashlight in hand.
But after two weeks, my mother conceded we may have done something wrong. I had a tankful of dead-on-arrivals.
I’m finally ready to attempt Sea Monkeys again. And perhaps I will find something meaningful to say about them along the way. Maybe I will learn the lessons and wisdom of the Sea Monkeys. Or quite possibly, I will kill them all again. I’m following the directions this time.
But first, I would have to wait twenty-four hours after adding the water purifier.
The girlfriend confessed she was about “twenty-five percent excited.”
(She has since rescinded that statement and wishes to comment that they look like sperm.)
Well, I am fully ninety-nine percent excited–but I find myself fretting. What if I am grossed out by them? What if I decide I just don’t want them anymore? What if we move, and I don’t want to take them with me? What if they smell bad? This must be what it’s like for any parent-to-be. The girlfriend assures me in a motherly voice that it will help me “learn responsibility and how to take care of pets.” She has been working around children too long.
Day one. I am so excited. It’s been twenty-four hours since I dumped the water purifier in. Well, actually it’s only been twenty two hours and five minutes, but I cannot wait any longer. I decide to hatch them now. What’s the extra two hours going to do? I drop them in and wait for the miracle of life to occur. Or at least the miracle of cryptobiosis.
The eggs sink lazily to the bottom. And that’s it. I want something happen. Right now. Come on. Right now.
“Well this is a good lesson for you about delaying your gratification,” the girlfriend says. She really has been working around children too long.
Well at least I was armed with knowledge going in this time. The eggs can take up to several days to hatch. If the water conditions aren’t exactly right–not salty enough; not warm enough–the eggs will wait to hatch. They’ve been dormant cysts for the last ten years. Another couple hours or days doesn’t make a difference to them.
Day two. I see the first one. I feel an immediate, strong attachment. My son. He’s barely the size of a pinpoint, and I can only see him in direct sunlight with one eye shut. A few hours later, there are others. At least ten. I love them all. What was I thinking with my doubts? Of course I want to keep them forever.
I take a look at the mail order form. You see, even though Sea Monkeys have a website, the company that makes them, the important-sounding Transcience Corporation, only accepts orders by mail order form. That’s right–no credit cards, no online purchase–cash and checks only. Mail Order. There’s two words from the past.
There is quite the menagerie of things one can order for their pet Sea Monkeys. This list includes: a “super” version of their food, “magic” vitamins, magical gem-like “diamonds” to decorate their tank, a formula to make them grow faster, a special banana treat, Sea Monkey medicine, and a mating powder that makes them fall in love. All these intriguing formulas come in little square packets. But come on. Who actually buys this stuff?
It’s only day two, but I am quickly learning the first Sea Monkey Lesson. That the only thing you can do with them is dump stuff in their tank. And I need stuff to dump, if I’m to have any sort of fun. I find myself gazing at the mail order form over and over again, and then curiously, uncontrollably, picking up a pen. Next thing I know, I’m checking off the packets I want, writing a check, stuffing it in an envelope, writing out the address to that neato sounding TRANSCIENCE CORPORATION. I write the letters with a bit of relish, pressing the pen down onto the envelope.
Each packet runs about three dollars a pop. I order the Banana Treat because even Sea Monkeys love snacks, the Sea Diamonds because that sounds fun, and the Sea-Medic, in case their tank becomes contaminated with a deadly bacteria that slowly suffocates them by depleting all their oxygen. You can never be too safe.
Day three. The babies are fully visible to the eye, and they are so cute. I love the way they swim in a strange herky-jerky way. There are at least twenty of them, and maybe thirty.
Here’s Baby Sea Monkeys: The Movie.
But their tank is so drab and boring. I can’t wait around for those Sea Diamonds–or whatever the hell they are–to arrive. I imagine an ornamental sunken pirate ship for them to explore for treasure. They’ll love it! I decide to go to Pet Smart.
I feel only a little silly as I walk through the parking lot, approaching the store. Families are walking in to buy food for their real pets, like Fido and Snowball, and I’m looking for a pirate ship for my Sea Monkey tank. As I wander the aisles, an associate asks me if I need help. I mention I’m looking for a pirate ship. She leads me to a large one that would be great for a forty gallon fish tank. No, I say, “this is a for a sea monkey tank. I need much smaller.”
“Oh,” she says. And that’s it.
Maybe I expected her to exclaim “Sea Monkeys!” and ask me their names. Or maybe compliment me on what a great idea it is to add ornamental figures to their tank. Maybe she’ll applaud me. Everyone else thinks their just primitive brine shrimp—no one ever thinks about what they might enjoy.
But instead, she just adds, “well that’s the only pirate ship we have.”
I thank her and tell her I’ll see if anything else catches my eye. There are not many ornaments to choose from that would fit in the small Ocean Zoo tank. But I settle on a small blue submarine. While not a pirate ship, the submarine is pretty cool. I’m not picky, and I don’t think they are either. I decide hot pink rocks would also look awesome lining the bottom of their tank. I pick up a bag of gravel.
Next, I need something to aerate the tank. Sea Monkeys are oxygen pigs and need air bubbles regularly blown into their tank. Once you start researching in depth, these little monkeys need things like regular aeration, medicine, and vitamins. Keeping brine shrimp as pets becomes an expense just like keeping any other pet. This is not advertised well on the packaging, nor is it explained much in the instructions–most likely because parents would back away slowly if they knew it was all this work.
There are several ways one can aerate the tank: purchasing the Million Bubbles Air Pump™ through the mail order form, which just looks like a crappy piece of plastic with a fancy name. Another method is to pour the Sea Monkey water back and forth between their tank and a clean glass. However, I’ve ruled out this method based on my inability to even pour coffee into a mug without spilling it. A crude method is to blow into the water through a straw—but be careful not to suck up, kids!
The straw method is the cheapest, and I picture myself blowing bubbles into the Sea Monkey home up to three times a day. Perhaps this could teach me another important Sea Monkey Lesson about love–perhaps the greatest Sea Monkey lesson of them all. Instead, I decide to look for an eye dropper or something else that would force air out by squeezing.
Another associate in Petsmart comes up to me to see if I need help. I explain I’m looking for a pet eye dropper.
“Yep, we sure do have those,” she said heartily, “what’s it for?”
“Sea Monkeys.”
She says nothing, and leads me to the droppers in silence. What is going on? Does Petsmart have a grudge against Sea Monkeys? Is it because I’m not with an adorable five year old girl clutching her Ocean Zoo tank next to me? Because it’s just me, wild-eyed and my hair unbrushed, at the Petsmart in old gym shorts and flip flops?
Day Four. I want to feed them. I want to feed them bad. I want their faces—if they have them—to beam and shine at me when I walk into the room, eagerly doing back flips for a pinch of food. But the instructions in the kit say no, that mis-feeding them will kill them. The instructions are like the mean mommy of this whole operation.
And there are a lot of instructions about what you can’t do. They’re like raising a Mogwai. You can’t place them in direct sunlight. You can’t feed them more than once a week. You can’t feed them anything other than their food. You can’t put them in a bigger tank. You’re not supposed to add non-Transcience approved things to their tank. Sea Monkeys are fragile, and not particularly resilient–not like goldfish, which can handle tons of abuse.
Day five. I need a name for them. There are too many to keep track of individually, so I think I should name as an entity. The girlfriend suggests I call them the Hoopty Wagon, because the ornamental rocks and submarine in their plastic tank is like a 1994 Toyota dressed up with rims. I like it. The Hooptys.
Also on day five, I can feed them. Unbridled excitement. I carefully measure a scoop of the green-colored particles from packet number three, and drop it in. I expect them to all race towards the food and eat all of it immediately, but instead they just strangely flagellate around the tank, as though nothing has changed. I wish there was a way to command them. SEA MONKEYS…GO. That didn’t work. Um. Let’s try this. SEA MONKEYS…DO.
Sea Monkeys: The Movie Part 2. They’re bigger.
And so my experiences as a Sea Monkey parent will continue. It’s Day Eight, and I only have about seven Sea Monkeys currently alive. I’m not sure how the others died, but I think it’s probably the pink rocks. And yet the seven that remain seem very hearty. I just hope they live long enough until the Sea Diamonds and Bananas arrive in the mail. Otherwise, I have to eat them myself. And If the girlfriend completely freaks over me eating Sea Monkey food, I’ll tell her to relax. It’s for the blog.
