Day 2-The Sea Monkey Diaries: An unauthorized manual for the care and feeding of your inner child

Sea Monkey preparation is simple, but protracted. It takes several days.  I hoped I would get home, fill my ocean zoo with water, open up my packets of Sea Monkey eggs and create an instant-aquarium.  My penchant for skimming instructions halted my unrealistic visions of Sea Monkey success. There are three packets, and three steps. None occur on the same day. What the fuck! Instant pets my ass. First you fill the ocean zoo with water. Ideally it’s bottled water, but New York tap is fine by me.  Next you pour packet one (labeled ONE) into the freshly filled zoo. This ‘water purifier’ creates an optimal environment for my Sea Monkey eggs. Those are in packet 2 (labeled TWO). But first you have to wait 24 hours for the water to be purified. It’s like brewing, or surgery, or an ancient pagan rite: purify the site (the self?), and prepare for rebirth.  Am I baptizing these Sea Monkeys? 36 hours later, I pour the second packet into the water, stirring with a ‘clean plastic spoon’ as per the instructions. I actually used a plastic knife. It’s a stirring implement, and spoons are way too useful to be sacrificed for a neo-pagan ritual of rebirth. The powder looks like salt, but when I peer through the magnifying lenses embedded in the sides of the ocean zoo, I can make out tiny black-reddish spots.  They’re kind of like microscopic mouse poo. So now I’ve got an 8” tall, 2 1/2” wide container of water and excrement. I’m still optimistic. I peek into the raised ‘portholes’ to examine the floating Sea Monkey eggs, and hope for movement or some sense of autonomy. The natural currents within the zoo cause the eggs to drift past these magnifying windows. The edge where the lens and the plastic blur to demarcate the end of each quarter sized magnification window creates an illusion of hope.  As the eggs float past this intentional optical flaw, they appear to elongate as if hatching and growing before my eyes. I don’t have to do anything else until the 5th day. That’s when I feed them the contents of packet 3. Are they a them? And how much food is in packet 3? It comes with a small, yellow plastic feeding spoon. I bet the inventors did a bunch of coke, because that Sea Monkey spoon looks suspiciously bump-sized. According to the instructions, the Sea Monkeys could last for 2 years.  Woah. That’s a commitment. 

I take my commitments to pets quite seriously. I used to pine for the goldfish in baggies won at carnivals. Many a kindergarten classmate walked home with goldfish in a baggie from Gloria Dei Lutheran School. I didn’t. I figured my parents wouldn’t let me keep it. There are lots of things my parents wouldn’t let me do.  After all, what are good parents if they’re not good at saying ‘No.’. Some of that discouragement probably saved me from busting my ass more often than I did. My folks didn’t want me to hurt myself skateboarding or playing football. So instead, I took up the unicycle, taught myself to eat fire, and learned to swallow swords. 

I finally won those goldfish in a baggie.  Steph and I were having the most grand day on Coney Island celebrating our friend Coach Fury’s birthday. We spied a game, where the prize for water boarding a clown was two goldfish. Or maybe we tossed ping-pong balls to win Marlo and Thomas. We brought them home, and by the time we left the subway, I had already ordered a same day delivery of tank, and food, and...well...go here if you want to learn the price of love.