Post-traumatic pet disorder

As a favor to my friend Abby, I am pet-sitting her Beta fish, Alpha. When she initially asked me to watch the fish, I thought this sounded like a pretty easy gig--a pinch of food every other day. Even easier than watering plants and having to worry about them getting too much water or too little, or too much sun, or not enough. (I am not good with plants. She knows this. I suspect that's why she didn't ask me to take care of them.) But a pinch of food? Surely I could handle that without killing anything.

But when I went to pick up my water-loving roommate of the next week and half, I started to remember. Traumatic, horrible memories of dead fish--fish I had killed--as a child. (And I'm not talking your standard "cheapo fish from the carnival goes belly-up in the bowl a week later" kind of stories.) I started to worry that Abby would return to find that I had failed her in the one simple task she had charged me with: to keep her fish from croaking. I started to worry that I was unfit to watch this fish. History has pretty much already proven that.

How bad could it be, you ask? Let me tell you. When I was 9, I had a small tank of neon tetra fish on the nightstand in my bedroom. Now as a child, I was a fitful sleeper. One night, I woke in the wee hours of the morning to discover that the floor next to my bed was wet and my fish tank was missing. Upon turning on the light, I discovered that my flailing, sleeping arms had knocked the tank off the nightstand. To my horror, there, flopping on the floor--amidst the broken, jagged shards of my former fish tank--were my 8 neon tetras, their little mouths opening and closing in waterless gasps as their eyes started to bulge. One by one, they died on the floor. I screamed and screamed, horrified by the sight. (What can I say? I was a highly strung child.)

After that, my parents passed a rule that I could no longer keep fish in my room. As a consolation, however, my dad did superglue the tank back together, printed out some fish on neon paper and stuck them--on toothpicks--back into my tank. He said they would have to do until I learned how to lie still and sleep like a normal person.

Time passed. Eventually, my parents bought me a new fish, a goldfish named Fred. Now I know it's silly to become attached to fish, but I was attached to Fred. I'd had him for almost a year when Christmas rolled around, and I felt like he deserved a stocking and presents, just like our other pets had. (What can I say? We're a weird family.) For presents, I had bought him some new plants and tiny plastic castle to put in his bowl.

"Aren't you excited, Fred?" I asked, as I scooped him out of his bowl and put him in a cup so I could wash out his bowl and put in his new accessories. He wagged his little fish tail at me; I like to think that he was, in fact, excited about the plants and castle.

In my haste to get him back into his bowl, however, I didn't think to check the temperature of the water. I poured him back into the bowl, and watched, horrified, as he died on the spot--boiled alive in hot water. His little limp body drifted in and out of the strands of his new plants and finally collided with the side of his new castle.

I was a certified fish killer.

I feel like fish usually die in a sort of vague, "no one's really to blame" kind of way. But this was clearly my fault. And I took it pretty hard. I immediately started crying and proceeded to lock myself in the bathroom for more than a hour. Needless to say, it kind of put a damper on that year's Christmas festivities.

There were no more fish after that. It was too hard, too painful.

Until now.

Now, I live in fear that I will come home and find Alpha dead and floating in his bowl. I am terrified that I will trip and accidentally knock his bowl off my dining room table, where he is currently stationed. I worry that my neighbor's cat, who likes to come visit, will think Alpha could make a good after-dinner snack. I fret that sunlight streaming through my windows will bounce off a particularly reflective surface and create some sort of heat-seaking laser beam that kills him dead, like ants under a magnifying glass. I am sure I couldn't handle the trauma of killing off yet another fish.

I am counting the days until Abby comes back.

I just hope I still have a fish to give her when she gets here.