Chapter 1: Off to the Pet Store!
Chapter 2: A Boy and His Fish!
Chapter 3: Mommy, Why Is Mr. Tsunami Sleeping on the Bottom of the Tank?
Chapter 4: The Aquarium of Lost Innocence
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Chapter 5: Off to the Pet Store, Part 2!
Chapter 6: A Boy and His New, Improved Fish!
Chapter 7: Mommy, Why is Mr. Tsunami Jr.’s Butt Sticking Out of the Filter?
Chapter 8: An Unexpected Flush
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Chapter 9: Off to the Pet Store, Part 3!
Chapter 10: He’s Dead Already? For the Love of God, We’re Still in the Parking Lot
Chapter 11: A Boy and His “This One’s On the House If You Don’t Report Us to the Better Business Bureau” Fish!
Chapter 12: Mommy, Why Is Mr. Tsunami Junior Jr.’s Body Shaking Like That?
Chapter 13: A Shallow Grave
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Chapter 14: Pet Store
Chapter 15: Fish
Chapter 16: Death
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Chapter 17: Oh, Sure, Why Not? Let’s Take Yet ANOTHER Trip to the Motherf*$@ing Pet Store! It Always Turns Out So Well, Doesn’t It? It’s Not Like We Have the Fucking Fish Killing Fields Underneath Our Deck or Anything. I Mean, Shouldn’t I Be Up in the Attic Painting Pictures of Clowns Since My Body Count’s Now Bigger Than John Wayne Gacy’s? Shouldn’t My Face Be On Novelty T-Shirts Since I’m the Dahmer of $1.99 Fish? But No, Let’s Go Ahead and Get Another Scaly Little Bastard! Won’t That Be Fun?
Chapter 18: I Told You So
Chapter 19: RIP, Mr. Tsunami Junior Jr. the Third. You Be Swimming With Jesus Now.
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Chapter 19: Off to the Toy Store!
Chapter 20: A Boy and His $150 Set of Legos!
Chapter 21: Mommy, Why Are You Crying in Your Closet and Eating Fish Food?
Chapter 22: An Unexpected Flush
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Awesome!
I was fish sitting for our neighbors once and had one of the fish die on me. I scooped it out and put it in a ziplock bag in the freezer just in case the parents wanted to me to do a run to the pet store for a replacement fish. Fortunately, they didn’t, because I really wasn’t looking forward to walking in to the store with a dead, frozen fish and saying, “Give me one that looks just like this.”
Too funny! Reason #9738 we don’t have pets.
Hahaha!!! Love it. Sharing it.
Puppies are nice.
Hehe. Brilliant.
Just be careful that you don’t have the ghosts of angry dead fish coming after you one night.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lisa and Karen Peterson, Wendi Aarons. Wendi Aarons said: Chapter titles from the (supposed) memoir I'm writing about our f#*$ing pet fish. New post: http://tinyurl.com/29sp6uq […]
I think Chapter 18 is my favorite. 🙂
I spent one very long evening panicking over my brother’s fish dying when I was … hmmm, I don’t remember – but young! Anyway, they kept going belly up and I’d poke them with a pencil. They’d start moving for a few seconds, then flip over again. I was convinced if I could just keep poking them they’d live. Poor, tortured fish – they couldn’t even die in peace.
You are the queen of the punchline.
The Killing Fields has nothing on you.
And THIS is why my children are pet deprived! Well, that and the fact that our landlord says NO PETS!
Chapter 17 is my favorite!
LOVE THIS! “Mr. Tsunami Junior Jr. the Third” How perfect! I hate fish. I like when they die. The last fish we had lived for THREE YEARS. He was a stinky bastard too.
Too funny. My experiences like that are with hamsters and bunnies….Trust me fish are much easier!!
Mr. Tsunami Junior Jr. the Third may be the greatest pet name ever.
I’m now remember why I keep telling my kids no animals. I mean besides the dog. She’s made it to 7 and a half years old…so she seems to be sturdy stock.
Oh my god! This could have been my story. Those stupid fish. They’re all the same! Fickle little things. The man at the pet store told me the fancy goldfish should last a good 2-3 years. When I laughed and said yeah right, he looked at me like I was crazy. That particular fish died the next day…
I’m calling PETA. And Starkist.
I like the last chapter best. You sure know how to introduce a proper anti-climax!
p.s. Legos are better. Trust me.
This is why my family always got puppies instead of goldfish.
Chapter 22: Why I am in hiding after PETA issued a FATWA against me.
Oh, no, that’s me. I killed my husband’s fish in his beautiful outdoor pond not once but twice. One of the three survivors of the first massacre was named Lucky by my daughter. He wasn’t so the 2nd time around.
Who know you had to add chemicals to perfectly good tap water in order for these buggers to live? Too much trouble in my book. We’ll stick with a dog. She’s much harder to kill.
okay. . . that was priceless!
You know, in the $150 lego sort of way. . .
next time head straight for the last chapter.. You forgot one KEY element to the last few chapters though.. Chapter 21.5 Mommy Drinks Herself Stupid While Hiding in the Closet Eating Fish Food.
Might be a gem.
We won one at the fair about seven years ago – the bastard just…won’t…die! Do you KNOW what a pain in the ass it is to dismantle a fish tank for one friggin’ ass goldfish?
I showed the cat how to open the lid this weekend, wish me luck.
My dad got my mom a puppy one year for mother’s day. Named her Candy. They live in the country, and well I will spare you the details, but we now have Candy #2. (Don’t tell my brother. He thinks that she just took a long time to grow out of being a puppy.)
It could be worse…my 2 sons decided to make my daughter’s fish tank pretty with a shiny penny or three…killed her goldfish she won at the fair within hours…she came to me crying. We ended up using the 3 fish tanks, (the boys’ fishies died within hours of getting them home)for the boys’ ideas of having nice little pets they got from the garden….you know, the normal, black widow spiders, wolf spiders, tiny ringneck snakes, a couple of lizards or two, and of course, MY FAV, a baby alligator they found by the river, which ate the baby turtle named Speedy my daughter found. Let’s just say when I saw the baby gator after I got home from work at 11 p.m. one night, and my husband thinking I was a raving lunatic with duct tape, wrapping around the baby gator’s mouth…in the end, no more fish tanks, we sped by the “throw this hoop and win a fish” at the fair, and now I have puppies, dogs, kittens, cats, and a 1 1/2 yr. old cow named Ladybug!
I think you have a poltergeist fish killer. Because everyone knows that fish live forever [in our hearts].
heeheehee John Wayne Gacy.
Sheee-it! Now I can say I know someone from Fishkill and not be a big liar!
You forgot to add the chapter where the teacher “gives” the class pet fish to your son. Wait, that’s my book.
OMG! I’m laughing so hard it physically hurts (I’m feeling the fish’s pain)! This is seriously fabulous…oh, and, er, sad, sorry I should pay my respects.
Another hysterical story Wendi!!! Tooo frigging funny!
I killed my son’s goldfish — Goose and Maverick — when he was away at summer camp when he was 9 years old. He still brings it up and he’s 30!
“a shallow grave” – Wendi, you’re like the Fish Mafia. Always killing. Always trying to dump the bodies. Always eating pastrami in the back room of your Waste Disposal Business. Or the back room of your marine-themed strip club. I do, however, agree with your methods of underage bribery.
And I thought I was the only one that called it the MotherF*$@ing Pet Store.
Never, ever buy an animal without first exacting at least three months of slavery out of them. You could have had your dishes done for a year with all those fish.
This pretty much summed up the month we tried to keep a fish tank in Oliver’s room. We moved him out of his crib and thought it would be like a big boy present/cool night light. After a month of pale floating forms every other morning (can’t even remember their names since we stopped bothering after the third set), we gave up and bought a boring night light. Luckily, two year old Oliver never really bonded with the fish. In fact – I don’t think he even noticed they were dead OR gone.
Thank you for making me laugh so hard coffee shot out of my nose! It’s always nice to know that I’m not the only woman in the world trying to achieve the coveted “Mom of the Year Award.” However, I do believe I hold the record for killing the world’s most exotic pet…I ran over my kids pet swan with my Jeep…yes…a swan.
Send me the first 50 pages!
Send me the first 50 pages before I think too hard about Theresa’s comment.
I’m presently in the cardiac care unit due to laughing so hard I had an embolism in my brain that caused my heart to start beating a conga. You will be hearing from my lawyer for your dangerous words. Thank you kindly.
Oh goodness I went through this. I accidentally killed my ex’s very old and very large goldfish, they were 6 years old and systematically since I took a liking to the fish, they slowly died one by one (there were 3). Then of course I tried replacing them, only to have more fish die on me.
It was hard losing those huge fish though. I felt like a horrible fish killer. They were huge and my ex tried to flush one and it clogged the toilet.. Can you imagine?
I actually dared to win a coupe fish at the store and spent $200 on aquarium stuff for a stinking fair goldfish. She’s still alive though, believe it or not.
But I am going to stick to my little doggy. She’s a year and a half now and believe it or not, no deaths. I think its just that I have a pretty good understanding for Mammals. They eat and sleep like us and it just makes life easier on everyone.
This was hilarious though, thank you for sharing. No more guilt ridden nights killing large goldfish. Sigh.
I’m so glad I found your blog – this one made me laugh so hard I woke up my daughter (at 3 am). She was not amused. : )