“Do you think we should just kill it?” I turned, asking my friend, Arianna.
“I mean, I guess…” she answered, her voice wandering off while she shifted her gaze from my goldfish tank to me.
My dad brought me a goldfish during some sort of festival that he went to with my older sister, Emily. That was what we did for fun when we lived in New Jersey, before my parents separated. Although I was only four at the time, I somehow had unfettered access to medicine cabinet. Probably because our babysitter was a junior in high school who brought her boyfriend over to the house to help “babysit,” but all they really did was fight, which gave me ample alone time to do things, or even think of things, like killing my innocent goldfish.
I went to the medicine cabinet, reaching on my tip toes, batted over a few pill bottles, but stopped when I saw what I recognized as the bane of my four-year-old existence: cherry-flavored cough syrup. I climbed my chubby little legs on the top of the toilet, leaned over and grabbed the red, syrupy liquid. I grabbed a few pill bottles too, just for good measure. I galloped back to my room and showed Arianna, who gave me a look that translated to “this seems exciting and fun, and I want to do this, but I also don’t want to get into trouble.” I’m a good face translator.
“And now, we wait,” I said, flopping back onto my bed. There was a total of two minutes waited until we checked to see if the goldfish was dead. He was. That was it. I let out a fake laughing sigh and poured the contents of the fish bowl into the toilet and flushed. Everything went back to normal — until we got to the playground. An hour after the fishicide, my babysitter had seemed to come to terms with her boyfriend and maybe had a revelation that she actually had a job to do, which was to take care of me. I was about to go down the slide, but instead I let out a huge cry which was suddenly followed by Arianna’s cry. I was hysterical. I felt that I had done the worst thing in the world by killing this poor, innocent fish. Through my tears, I fessed up to Gina the Babysitter, and she started laughing. Laughing? I had just committed a murder, and she’s laughing?! What kind of babysitter was this?
“It’s okay” she said, guiding me down the slide. “You just have to tell mommy and daddy.” This was the worst news. I always wanted to be the good kid, the one who never got in trouble, or at least the one who doesn’t kill common household aquatic pets. I could have gotten away with it, but I did end up telling my parents. Surprisingly, they laughed too. Looking back, I would’ve hoped they’d be concerned about my behavior, but what’s done is done.
The day I killed my goldfish taught me that I’m not the trouble-making type. I’m too soft. I followed this epiphany all the way until high school.
