The Year I Was Born

By: Laura

My name is Bubbles. I am a happy goldfish, or at least I was until that new girl moved in with us. The humans used to change the water in my tank every week and buy me floating plants and little plastic castles that I could swim through. They fed me twice a day and bought me friends to play with. But then the girl human started to get fat.

Now, I don’t mean to be rude by that, but it seems to me that someone must have been giving her a few too many fish flakes. It seems that as she grew and grew, the humans paid less and less attention to me. They stopped buying me the good fish flakes and started to buy the cheap dry smelly stuff. They hardly ever cleaned my tank or changed my water. One time they forgot to clean my tank out for so long that I could barely see through the green slimy glass. My castle tipped over so I couldn’t swim through it, and they didn’t even notice. My two friends, Goldie and Bob, died and they just flushed them right down the toilet.

With my perch on the living room bookshelf, I had a perfect view of everything that the humans did. I could watch TV when they did, and I could watch them as they read their TIME magazines. People seem to be under the impression that goldfish are stupid creatures, but I would beg to differ. I have great eyesight, and you would be quite surprised to see how much I learned about my humans lives, just by reading along as they sat there with their newspapers and magazines. I also watched the news every night, just like they did. I bet you haven’t met very many goldfish that know more about politics than you do.

I remember watching Saturday Night Live every Saturday with the boy human. And I remember how sad he was when he heard John Belushi had died. I remember seeing Ronald Reagan on C-SPAN, talking about his plans for peace and the increase of defense spending. As the girl human got fatter and fatter, it seemed that she spent more time sitting on the couch reading books and magazines and watching TV and movies. The boy human made popcorn, and they sat on the couch and laughed as they watched Crocodile Dundee. They watched Top Gun, and while the boy human talked about the mechanics of the airplanes, the girl human swooned over Tom Cruise.

One day the boy human was in the kitchen cooking dinner and the girl human was on the couch, fatter than ever, when all of a sudden the girl human started yelling. They rushed out of the door without even saying good-bye to me. They were gone overnight and didn’t even bother to give me my fish flakes.

A few days later they came home with this new little girl human. They cooed and oohed over her and ignored me. I felt lonelier than ever. Toys were purchased to entertain her, and they made her food. Everywhere I looked there were little human shoes and little human clothes. They played with her and picked her up. They let her crawl all over and didn’t even get mad when she spilled all of the water out of my tank and I almost suffocated.

After a few months though, I began to enjoy her. She spent hours watching me as I swam around in my little fish tank. She would smile and laugh when I would swim through my castle or do little goldfish tricks. She became almost like a friend to me. The big humans read her lots and lots of books that I found I enjoyed. After awhile I even almost liked Sesame Street.

The big humans were happier too. They laughed more often and danced together in the living room to Whitney Houston and James Taylor. Finally, they started paying attention to me again too. Even though they still bought me the cheap fish flakes, they always remembered to feed me and to clean out my tank. Everything was going well for me, that is, until the girl human started to get fat again.