Goldfish just aren't supposed to live that long.

It all started with the Montebello Elementary School spring fair the year I was in third grade. I'd had a goldfish once before that I won at some carnival. I kept it on the bookshelves in my room in a clear plastic tank shaped like a small TV, so it looked like you were watching the fish on TV. (After all, why have a real fish if you can watch one on TV? But I digress...) Like any self-respecting carnival fish, that one died after a few months. I woke up one morning to find it floating at the top of the tank, bent sideways at what would be its waist, fins splayed and eyes crossed. I stood entranced before the mirror for a good five minutes trying to perfect this expression myself before I remembered to freak out. I screamed for my dad. He promptly arrived and flushed it away to fishy heaven, and no one was much worse for the wear.

Then came the Montebello fair. There was one of those booths where you tossed the ping-pong ball into the bowl and won a fish that you got to take home in a plastic baggie. If it lived that long. For some reason I'll never know, I just kept winning. All I can figure is that it must've been rigged or something, as I have never in my life even remotely succeeded at anything requiring an ounce of eye-hand coordination. Yeah, I was that kid, you know, the one who was always picked last in gym class? And not just for social reasons, mind you, though I was no star in that arena either. It's just that when you had to play softball with an unlimited number of strikes per person (I think it was supposed to improve our self-esteem–HA!), only the truly masochistic would want to be stuck in the "ups" line behind me.

So anyway, I just kept on winning. Come to think of it, if I kept winning, why in the world didn't everyone else? Maybe the goldfish game wasn't cool that year and I didn't get the memo. Or maybe my itsy-bitsy little tendency toward the obsessive-compulsive in combination with my ever-so-slightly competitive nature kept me tossing those balls way longer than any sane child would. Or maybe my school board president dad and PTA president mom were so busy doing presidential things that, unlike any normal kid, nobody was there to stop me in time.

I wound up with at least ten fish. We started out with a big, round bowl in the kitchen under the snacks cupboard, with the fish I named "Dizzy" swimming lightning-speed psychotic circles round the others 24/7. The bowl presented a bit of a problem whenever I got hungry and wanted to climb up on the counter to reach the cabinet, but I soon learned to jump up and balance myself with one foot on each side of the bowl, being very careful not to drop raisins or animal crackers into the water.

The bigger problem occurred when, after months of refusing to die, the fish became suicidal. First thing in the morning, the innocent passerby, looking for cereal, would instead find a fish stuck to the yellow and white linoleum floor, dried and purple but otherwise with a very similar expression to that found on Fishy the First, late of TV-land. This happened more than once. Our neighbor found this hysterical and each time regaled us with stories of how her brother once laid out her fish to dry, or of the time he tried to teach them to climb the stairs. I was not impressed. I was, however, growing increasingly phobic about entering the kitchen.

It was time for the heavy artillery.

We got an aquarium. By this point, some of the fish had committed pescasuicide, but, ever persistent, I kept acquiring more through more school fairs, so we had a steady roster of about eight to ten. My mom took me to the big fish store that was painted on the inside like you were actually in an aquarium. We got a 15-gallon tank–with a lid, thank you very much–and I picked out large cobalt blue stones that the fish liked to suck up and spit out all day long. (Hey, everyone needs a hobby.) I chose a tropical sea backdrop and a purple light for a sort of fishy-on-acid effect, and rounded out the scenery with a plastic plant and a bubbling treasure chest that opened and closed. Of course, while I was enjoying the interior decorating, my mom was busy picking out the tubing, aerator, bucket, vacuum and endless other supplies needed to care for the fish.

Anyone who's ever had goldfish knows that they are the slobs of the fish world, and the water soon grew cloudy and gray. Thus, every so often, a weekend afternoon would be devoted to tank cleaning, and for at least a week afterwards, the entire house would reek of fish poo. Mom would hook up the tubes, vacuums, buckets, etc., using up a good portion of her ample kitchen space in the process, and the fish–Fred, Ethel, Martha the überfish, ET–would go on vacation to Yellow Bucketsville. It was an ugly job. And, now that I think about it, one that mom had every right to make me do myself. I don't know, maybe she tried. Which might explain why she wouldn't let me get a dog.

Those fish lived on a good ten years, and let me tell you, a geriatric goldfish is not a pretty sight. They grew and grew. And grew. Especially Martha, who was at least ten inches long. Their once vibrant color paled to a dingy whitish orange, they lost scales, shredded their fins and got hemorrhagic septicemia so we had to keep putting erythromycin in the water. They either got cataracts–fisheracts?–or their eyes bulged and bulged until they literally popped, leaving a nasty hole where an eye should be.

All of this was exacerbated by Ken, the algae eater fish, so named by our German exchange student after the guy who sometimes cleaned my parents' house. Rather than eating algae, Ken (the fish, not the cleaning guy) began instead to feast on the goldfish's scales, leaving large, bloody patches along their sides. Yet still, they would not die.

Finally, none too soon, the old-timers began to bite the dust, one by one, until all that remained was poor old Martha. At this point, she was over a foot long, both eyes were long busted, which made her bump into the sides of the tank when she bothered to swim at all, and her swollen, almost white scales had been so nibbled at by Ken that she looked a bit like a bloated, bloody corn on the cob.

I warned you it wouldn't be pretty.

Time marched on and Martha spent her days hovering mid-tank, often requiring us to wait a good thirty seconds to determine if she was still alive. More often than not, you could only tell by the string of poo slowly growing out of her nether regions.

Many moons passed, and the fateful day finally arrived. Mom called me at school to inform me of Martha's passing into the great fishy unknown. I could tell she was trying hard to disguise the glee that somehow still found its way into her voice. She said she had made a coffin of paper towels in a plastic bag–from Ziploc unto Ziploc–and buried her in the backyard, as Martha was way beyond the capacity of a simple septic system. I couldn't help but wonder if her bloated carcass deflated and hissed upon entrance into her quicker-picker-upper grave.

If my kids ever want goldfish, they'll have to stick with Pepperidge Farm.