John and Corinne's Family Chronicles

Or more accurately, the title should read One Fish, Two Fish, One Fish, No Fish.

Sean had really been on us about getting a pet. At first he decided that Polly was his pet. That was all well and good for a month or so, until he realized that she’s betrothed to me… for better or for worse.

We started talking about fish and he got really excited. I had lots of fish growing up and John and I thought it would be a happy medium to appease Sean while not having to commit too much time and money.

So we set off to the fish store where we planned to get all the equipment necessary. To us, that was a tank and fish. The young man who helped us was very into his job, and started us out looking at a 10 gallon tank. I thought John was going to pass out. We explained again that this is for a four year old kid and the more basic the better. So, we settled on a small tank which then made the young man very nervous because we could really only fit one fish in this size tank. Come on. I mean, I’m all into animals but clearly we could squeeze at least two fish in there. He agreed, but said that they had to be very small fish – not something as ginormous as a goldfish. Once that was settled, Sean picked out some fun blue rocks and some fake plants and we were off to look at fish. We decided guppies were the way to go… I had guppies when I was just out of college (after my gerbil died… it’s a long story… how I snagged John I’ll never know) and I liked that they were easy and had a variety of colors. At this point, the young man took me aside -- Did you plan to take these fish home TODAY? To which I responded simply, Yes. You would have thought that I just yelled at the top of my lungs that I was going to eat them when we got home. He told us that the tank would not be ready, it needed to stabilize and that he couldn’t let me do it for at least a week.

By now, John had to take Dylan to the car because we were past his naptime and he was quickly taking a turn for the worse, and my patience was running out. I told the man that I’ll do whatever he recommended doing but that I was not leaving that store without a fish. So we picked out two pretty male guppies (baby guppies were not part of the plan) and headed for the checkout line. I was so anxious the whole way home, thinking that if one of those fish died I’d have to go back and suffer the wrath of the young man who would just say over and over I told you so!

Needless to say, we got them home, tank setup, fish in and everyone was happy. Sean was proud as a peacock. This was on a Sunday.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went really well. We were getting Sean into his feeding schedule and were having a lot of fun watching them during the day. On Thursday, I was giving the boys a bath when John came home from work and popped his head in asking where Fish #1 was. We guessed he was just hiding but started searching and couldn’t find him anywhere. We started to panic that maybe he got caught up in the filter so we had the whole tank apart, flashlights in hand. Ten minutes later and still nothing. We were so confused. The top was on and there was no way that either Sean or Dylan could scoop one of them out by hand. And I had just seen both of them a few hours before. Just as John said ‘Well, unless it jumped out of the little hole in the top, I have no idea’ we looked down. There he was. Right there on the carpet, dead as a doornail. We hid the evidence like we were covering up a murder scene. How in the world could that have happened? It was a mystery.

Sean took the whole thing in stride as a four year old would. He was convinced that the fish was playing hide and seek and would surface eventually. So we carried on, one fish down but one fish still in the tank, doing quite well.

Would you believe that on Saturday, he went missing too?

And would you also believe that we found him on the carpet, even further away from the tank, dead as a doornail?

I kept scratching my head… I never had anything like this happen with all of the fish I owned. The man at the store said nothing about fish jumping out of the tank (especially out of a hole that was about an inch in diameter). But would you believe that when I started looking online about it, it was like a whole hidden world about how guppies can jump 7 times their body length at more than 4 feet per second. Every single person I asked at work about it told me their stories about how they had guppies jump out of tanks… like I was a crazy person not to know this.

That’s the end of our fish story. The tank stayed in Sean’s room for a few more weeks until we drained it and put it in the basement. I have enough drama on my own. I don’t need to pile it on with jumping fish.