Today is July 14th, 1983 Time 5:56 Today I went to Ashford for the first time in 2 weeks. It's good to be back. The doctor said I had a virearse and my cough is going away. It better be gone Tuesday because we have an activity and Mom said I cann't go onless its gone. We have 3 new goldfish.
Ashford was the name of my church congregation. Apparently being sick at home for two weeks makes you happy to go back to church. I can't remember if I was the accompanist for the congregational portion of services, but I probably was the pianist for the youth portion. By that time, the congregation was probably glad I was back too.
This is an important entry, because it notes the appearance of pets for the first time in our family history. Mom had wicked bad allergies to everything with hair, fur, dust, dander, or slobber (which meant she was really allergic to us kids too), so we never had pets. Fish, the parental units thought, would be fairly low maintenance and a good compromise. Sadly, this tail has a sad end, without even a flush to end it.
The three goldfish were named after me and my two brothers. They were kept in a very simple glass bowl on the dormant wood stove in the living room. All was well, we thought, in Fish Land. A day passed. The fish swam. We children delighted in pets. Food was given. Day three dawned with a mystery. The fish named after my youngest brother was missing. Two fish were left. A search went out around the stove and the hearth to see if the fish had jumped to its death. Not a scale was found. Tears were shed. The two fish swam. Children adjusted to two pets. Food was given. Day four dawned with another mystery. The fish named after me was missing too. This was very perplexing. Another search was initiated, but eventually called off by Dad who figured that the fish had to have been victims ... of goldfish fratricide. The only fish remaining was the one named after my middle brother, and given the lack of evidence, Dad deduced that that fish cannibalized its bowl mates. Eventually, that fish got its just rewards and was found belly up. I don't remember a ritual disposal, but thus ended the family keeping fish as pets.
After such a catastrophic experience with the fish, you would have thought we would have learned our lesson with pets. However, there was the brief, and I do mean brief, experiment with rabbits being kept in the garage. Turns out that getting two male bunnies is not such a good idea, as they beat the heck out of each other. The definition of "fur flying" comes to mind when I remember what the garage looked like. A replacement female bunny for one of the males also didn't turn out well, and they were given away to good homes. Their replacement family ended up showing them at the local agricultural fairs, so it wasn't so harebrained an idea after all.
Mom's allergies also turned out to be genetic. The whole hair, dust, dandruff allergy was passed down in various degrees of severity to me and my youngest brother, who goes into almost anaphylactic fits around our nephew-cat Tippi. I have a time limit to how much I can be exposed to Tippi or other furry creatures, including the collection of hair balls and dust bunnies I consider my pets.
No comments:
Post a Comment