Have you let this happen to you?
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- September
- 18
You know the scenario: Cute child. Cute puppy/kitten/goldfish/hamster. Begging on the part of the child. Resistance, then capitulation, on the part of the parent. Child cleans up after pet for one week. Parent gets a new hobby. It happened to my sister-in-law, Susanne, who lives up near Albany with her family, which includes my obviously persuasive nephew. I found out this weekend how grateful a parent can be when a must-wanted pet finds its final reward.
“It finally died. Thank God.” That’s what my sister-in-law said to me on Saturday when I gave her a call to finalize our apple-picking plans for Sunday. She was talking about her son’s fish, and the relief in her voice was palpable. “None of us could stand the fish. It required constant cleaning,” Sue told me. The black guppy lived in its two-gallon tank for about a year  long after a young boy’s aquatic zeal diminished. “He lost interest when he realized it requires work,” she said. Sue estimates that she spent about a half hour once a week over the past year cleaning the tank. Add it up and it comes to 26 hours!
Even though the family’s feelings for the fish changed over the course of the year, no one was willing to do the unthinkable, though the topic was raised. “My son said, ‘Can we flush him down the toilet, and then he’ll be out in the open?’ I said, ‘No, we can’t. It would die, and that’s not nice.’” But then one day, their hopes were answered. “We came home and it was floating. We said, ‘Yeah!’ We’re all so happy. We came to hate the fish.”
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 1:50 am by Julie Moran Alterio.
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what an ugly thing to write.
Julie,
If one guppy was a chore, it’s a good thing they didn’t get a dog or a cat.
Growing up we had dogs, fish, turles, snakes and a bird. Worst thing I recall happening was when one of my brothers – then perhaps four – shut himself in the bathroom with our dog and drew all over Skippy with my mother’s lipstick and mascara. I wish we had pictures.