The natural order of things

I was 23 and I was at a crossroads. I had decided that in order to become a man, and eventually a father, I had to learn some responsibility. To be a family man, I would have to think of someone else before myself: my spouse or children. Therefore, before I could even think about getting married and being responsible for a family, I had to be able to take care of a dog. I set rules like this from time to time. Being the logical and rational person that I am, however, I realized that no responsible person would jump into a relationship with a dog without some sort of background in the care and nurture of another living being. This epiphany resulted in the additional build up towards dog-care through the hierarchy of pets.

First I would get a plant. Something fairly simple, though not as easy as a cactus. I wanted to make sure I would feed it every day. Once I could sustain a modest number of plants I would progress to fish, after which would come reptiles, small mammals, maybe a bird, and eventually a dog. Then, after a couple of years with the dog, the two of us could progress into a relationship with the ideal woman, who very likely, lived somewhere in the immediate vicinity, it only being a matter of time before she happened upon my doorstep requiring some sort of assistance that only I could provide.

It was only a few months before I decided I could move on to fish. Plants didn’t really matter anyway. They were so fickle. Who really knows how much you are supposed to water them anyway? Fish were real. Watering them was no problem, and you feed them for five minutes, once a day. I can do that. Besides, they are cool to watch. Plants don’t ever do much. Fish have personality.

One month and eleven fish later, I was wondering if I would ever get to a dog. I stopped naming the fish because I was using up all of the good names on dead ones. I made a rule that the fish had to live for one month before they earned a name. I had thought about naming the fish after dead people, but that didn’t seem very sporting, kind of like dooming them from the beginning. They’d never live a month if they had self esteem issues. You have to be supportive.

So there I was nurturing the short sporatic lives of goldfish. They were the fancy kind, you know, the ones with poochy bellies, bulbous eyes, and butterfly tails. I don’t know where the snails came from. One day they weren’t there, the next day there were three. The next week there were eight. My fish were dying but my snails were reproducing like it was the end of the world. Maybe fish were a little premature. Maybe I should have started with snails. In the end I had a lot of plants. That’s what algae is anyway. It’s a hell of a lot easier than fish. The snails seem to like it too; I named the biggest one ‘Fish,’ and he seems to have taken to it. At least he hasn’t died yet.

I have heard that the mark of a great chef is someone who can carry on all the necessary tasks to prepare a meal with the proper sequence and timing so that everything comes together at the same time. Likewise, since my responsibility level had been elevated from dust bunnies to gastropods and mono-cellular plants, I felt it was probably time to go searching for that perfect woman. That way, by the time she was moving in, I’d be getting a dog and it would all roll smoothly from there. Everything was unfurling according to plan.