Introducing Flippy the Fish

When I was little, my family lived in a 3rd floor apartment in Brooklyn.  I don't know if the rental agreement expressly forbid dogs and cats, my parents thought it would be kinder to the dogs and cats of this world not to try to squeeze them into the apartment, or if three little girls were enough trouble without adding four legged creatures into the equation.  For awhile we did have a series of goldfish named after the '86 Mets, however.  My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I feel like they lasted quite awhile, and then we got some really stupid silver fish who kept getting stuck between the filter and the tank wall, and died off rather quickly.  I think that was more or less the end of that experiment.

I know fish don't rank very high up on the exciting pets list, but I'm weird.  Heck, as a kid, my favorite part of the Natural History Museum was the rock/gem section.  I like boring.  Anyways, I always wanted another fish, but my sisters all ended up with cats, and the odds of my 25 cent goldfish living more than a week in a house with three cats just weren't that good.  Somewhere along the line I ended up with a husband, two kids, and a dog instead.  Funny how things work out, no?

Anyway, yesterday I went into Petsmart to get our dog some rawhide treats so she'd leave WeeBee's crayons alone.  (Don't ask.)  We use it as our local aquarium/zoo, and take WeeBee to see all the animals.  Hey, it's free and you can pop your kid in a cart and keep them from running off - can't beat that.  Well, this time my husband suggested getting WeeBee a pet fish.  I had just found the dog treats for 75% off simply because there was a red Christmas bow on them, and being in a good mood, I agreed, on the condition that we could find a round fish bowl.  Not a roundish one with flat sides, a real round fish bowl like you see in cartoons.  They're really quite difficult to find in real life, and I really wasn't expecting them to have one, but they did.  Ten minutes later we were the proud owners of Flippy the Fish, Petsmart's finest 13 cent goldfish.  (WeeBee named him after the fish from Oswald the Octopus before I could come up with a suitable Doctor Who name for him, but as it really is his fish, I'll let it go this time.)

The cutest part of the evening, though, was when WeeBee insisted that we walk quicker in the parking lot on the way back to the car.  "Mommy, walk quickly!  Walk quickly, Flippy will get cold, Mommy!"