“Life with Beta”

A narrative with a lesson

All my life, I have wanted a pet. A dog would be nice. I would name him Rex. Perhaps Rex would be a sheepdog. Yes, a very adorable and intelligent sheepdog! I had visions of myself running around grassy fields with Rex. Together, we could fight crime! Cute and scruffy as he would be, he would have the nose of a bloodhound. We would take rigorous walks together, killing two birds with one stone by getting both of our daily exercise in, while surveying the neighborhood. In our spare time, we would go to dog shows all over the country and win blue ribbons saying “Best in Show,” which, to the envy of all our neighbors, I would proudly display on my front door. Rex would be the most brilliant sheepdog ever.

Unfortunately, I cannot afford a sheepdog like Rex right now. I do not have the time to run around with him nor do I even own a vacuum cleaner with which to siphon up his hair. Maybe when I am more stable, Rex and I can finally be together. In the meanwhile, while I wait for this time, I am in pain. Not just because I can’t be with Rex, but also because of the substitute that I had for him—Beta.

I bought Beta spontaneously one day while on a trip to the movie theatre, which happens to be located right next door to a pet store. The store had that glorious smell that pet stores have—a combination of rabbit hair, dog food, dirty tank water, and other pungent yucky pet smells. When I saw the sign for the store and remembered Rex, I decided that I needed to be brave, that it was time I get my pet. I plugged my nose and barreled in. Mind you, I was on my way to see a movie. I could have come back to the store when I wasn’t on my way to sit in front of a large screen for two hours, but at that point, thinking about Rex and all, I was too anxious about my future friend from the store. My mind was in a million directions. I decided to scan the fish aquariums. A fish could live in a bag for a few hours and be okay. I paced the back of the store where the fish tanks were lined up. No, no, no. That fish looked like it had a disease. That fish was ugly. That fish looked boring. What was this now? Aha! I found myself in front of several small plastic cups, each containing a beta fish. There was a blue one, a red one, and a bluish-red one. The bluish-red one caught my eye, tantalizing me with its color-changing fins. My mind began to drift…Beta fish are fighter fish. They eat other fish when in the same tank. They can change color. The color part really appealed to me. Considering that my movie was about to start and I still needed to buy my ticket, I quickly made a decision. “I’ll take that one!” I beamed to the cashier, pointing to the bluish-red beta fish.

It took forever for me to decide what to name my fish, but finally, Beta is what it became. For a while, because I did not have anything else to put him in, Beta lived in my old French press (without the top on, of course—I am not inhumane!) I personally thought it was quite cute and inventive of me to use my former French press for a fish bowl, but my friends insisted that it looked like I was ready to drink Beta up. Much to my dismay, I replaced Beta’s habitat was something a bit more traditional and boring—a medium-sized glass vase. To complement the bluish-red color changing abilities of Beta, I purchased purple plastic rocks for the vase. Because all of this took time, energy, and long discussions with my roommates, I barely noticed the worst thing about Beta, which is that he was an extremely boring fish. The most interesting thing he would do was swim to the surface of the water when I dropped three tiny pellets into his vase twice a day so that he could get some nourishment. This is what started the pain. Here I was, feeding and taking care of Beta. I thought deeply about his living conditions. I argued with my roommates about it, for crying aloud! And what was Beta doing for me in return? Nothing! I decided I needed to spice things up.

First, I tried changing the location of the vase. It went from my bedroom to the living room coffee table to the middle of the dining table. Then it went back to the living room coffee table, because I felt funny eating seafood, which I eat quite often, in front of Beta, and I thought that I would be too exclusive to the other people in my apartment and visitors if I only kept Beta in my bedroom. You would think that doing this would make life with Beta somewhat more interesting, but unfortunately, doing all of this failed to spice things up. I then decided to put Beta back in the French press, for old times’ sake. But then my friends complained to me again. It wasn’t like the French press had been in use or was going to be in use ever again, but still, they complained. Since they felt so strongly about it and I was just interested in spicing things up, back to the boring glass vase Beta went. Then I had an idea. My roommate has his own fish aquarium in the corner of the living room. It contains dull, regular-colored goldfish. For fun, I placed the vase in front of the aquarium so that I could see Beta’s fins straighten out and get into panic mode. He looked so intense when he did that! It made me so excited! The other scrawny goldfish in the aquarium would get scared when Beta got ready to charge. They would swim to the back of the tank. Goldfish are so stupid. They don’t realize that there is glass—not one, but two separate entities of glass—that separates them for the enemy. If Beta didn’t have such cool color-changing abilities, I would have called him stupid too; the fact that he gets get into panic mode is proof that he is stupid. But at least he gets ready to attack his enemy instead of swimming away from his fear.

Realizing that I had a way to spice things up every time Beta got a little too boring for me, life became more pleasant. Then the unthinkable happened. It is why I am still in pain, more pain than from being bored, and even more pain than not being able to be with Rex.

Beta committed suicide.

From the evidence, I suspect that it happened between the hours of 11 pm and 2 am one night in early August. By that time, my relationship with Beta had lasted about eleven whole months—the longest relationship I had ever had. Earlier that evening, I had gone about my regular routine. My roommates were gone for the weekend. I had plans to go to a party that night, nothing too pretentious, just a kickback. I finished all of my schoolwork, cleaned up the apartment, and started getting ready to go out. I remember spying on Beta in his glass vase while I was doing my work. Your vase is getting a bit dirty, I thought. I’ll be a good owner and clean the vase so that you can live in a clean, hazardous-free environment. And good owner I was! I cleaned the vase during my break from my work, letting Beta reside in his former habitat the French press while I did so. I put a couple of pH balancer drops into the vase once it was filled with fresh water. For good measure, I let it sit for a couple of hours before I transferred Beta back into his home. I did the transfer right before I left for the night, in fact. I left thinking that I had nothing to that should make me worry. I was wrong.

I admit, when I came back to the apartment in the wee hours of the morning, I was a bit inebriated. I guess I should mention, because it has something to do with the subsequent events of this story, that I tried weed for the first time that night. It was not a big deal, but this piece of information is included to give you insight on my state of mind. Anyway, my friend drove me home that night. I opened the font door to my complex, hopped on the elevator, hopped back out when it reached my floor, and let myself into my apartment. I was in a chatty mood, so I decided to ring a friend on the east coast who was just beginning her own Saturday night summer adventure. I did not pay too much attention to the surroundings of the living room and had this phone conversation while sitting in my black armchair, which is located in my bedroom. It is quite a comfortable chair. It made me even more relaxed than the substances in my body already were making me! I was so cozy that I decided to send a thoughtful text message to my brother to inform him that his younger sister was faded for the first time. After I completed this arduous task (my fingers kept typing the wrong letters), I left my room to get something to eat in the kitchen. While snacking on some crackers and hummus and thinking about my fun-filled night, my brother called me. Turns out, he was awake, coming back home from his own Saturday night adventures! We started talking. I moved from the dining table to the living room couch. As I stretched my legs out and surveyed the landscape of my living room, I felt the highest feeling of contentment. Meanwhile, my brother was jabbering away. I let my eyes roll over to the coffee table. And that’s when I saw it.

Beta was not in his vase!

I started screaming. The fact that I was cradling a cell phone near my ear became oblivious to me. Nor did I notice my brother’s voice, yelling at me what was happening. I realize now that this was unfair of me, that my brother probably thought that I was in the midst of trying to escape from a rapist. But at the time, I was absorbed in the world of my apartment and the empty vase. “My fish is not in the vase!” I wailed to my brother. My breath became short; I began to panic. My brother tried unsuccessfully to calm me down by telling me that I was probably just hallucinating and that my beta fish was still in the vase. That made me even more scared! Hallucinations! I don’t hallucinate! Not even when I am inebriated! If indeed I was hallucinating, then what was happening to me?! Damn that weed! Realizing that I was alone in the apartment, that even Beta was gone, I officially started to hyperventilate. Gone were my feelings of relaxation! I started to cry. “No, no, I’m not hallucinating! He’s really not in the vase!” I cried to the phone. At that point, I was not only crying but hiccupping as well, because I hiccup when I am scared. What could have happened? Was I really just seeing things? Frantic, I scanned the areas near the coffee table and the vase. I told myself to breathe slower, that I needed to collect myself. That’s when I realized what had happened.

The drops of water at the brim of the vase. The small puddles next to it. Approximately one foot northwest of the coffee table, Beta’s poor limp body, shriveled up and aired out of any moisture that it once contained.

Beta had jumped out of his home!

I yelled to my brother what my eyes had discovered. Beta’s body looked so scary all dried up that I almost wished that I were being delusional. “No, I swear, I’m not hallucinating! He really is dried up on my living room floor!” Once my brother was convinced that his intoxicated sister was not hallucinating and that the circumstances were true, he advised me what to do. I was still too shaken to think clearly at the time. This is what he said: “Say a quick ten second prayer and throw him down the trash chute.”

What? The trash chute? It didn’t seem like it was enough. But at that time (just shy of 3 am), I was tired, still inebriated, and in no condition to try to ascertain why Beta would do such a thing. I got off the phone. In my wretched state, I found an old newspaper and used the pieces to sweep the bluish-red body onto the sports section. In hindsight, I could have given Beta a farewell at sea. That would have been more fitting for a fish, but the thought of approaching the toilet did not even occur to me at the time. The only thoughts in my head were not even thoughts but simply bubble letters, spelling out my brother’s orders. Say a quick ten-second prayer and throw him down the trash chute. I stepped out of my apartment and into the hallway, glancing furtively from left to right to make sure that no one was around. Seeing Beta in the newspapers that my hands were gingerly holding, I felt culpable in some way. It was as if my very holding the newspapers suggested that I was affiliated with crime, and my specialty was pet crime. Before there was time for anyone else to come and contemplate my alleged criminal intent, I ran down the hallway, stopped in front of the trash chute, took in a breath, said a ten-second prayer, and threw Beta away from my life.

Beta’s suicide was a very traumatic experience for me. There has been much speculation about why it happened. Some say the pH of the water was off balance. However, I know that I made sure the pH was correct before I left. Others say that the water was too high and that Beta got excited when he was swimming around and accidentally jumped out. To those who insist this story, I say bullshit. Beta was not an exciting fish. He never actually swam around in his vase unless there were pellets at the surface of the water to remind him to eat. On the night he died, there were no such pellets because I had fed him earlier that day. As for the level of the water, this may be viable theory…but I changed his water many times during our relationship, always filling the vase to that exact height, and nothing had happened before. What then? Considering the questionability of these theories, there are some who hint that Beta did it to spite me, to get back at me for making him test his nerve endings every time I placed his vase in front of my roommate’s aquarium. But if that is the reason, then why did Beta wait eleven months to get back at me? If he were so angry, wouldn’t he have done it right away instead of allowing me to put his vase in front of the aquarium month after month? Perhaps it did take him eleven months to plan his revenge; after all, fish are stupid. Whatever the truth may be, I shall never know.

In the meantime, despite the disturbance of this experience, it has made me want to reach out to others, to warn them of pet suicide and give them tips on owning pets. Hence, for those interested in having a pet, I have developed a few ground rules.

1. Never do anything to/for/with your pet before going to a party, especially if that party falls on a Saturday night. You might later be accused of being delusional, which may mar your image and question your innocence if pet suicide should erupt.

2. Never buy a pet spontaneously. Think up ways to spice up life with your pet before actually beginning a life with the animal. Otherwise, people may think that some of the things you do to make things more interesting with the pet, like placing enemy fish against each other so they can see each other, are objectionable.

3. And finally, stick with your first-choice pet. Beta may haunt me, but Rex is still in my heart.

The lessons are here for you, folks! You can take them or leave them. Just remember to drink and smoke responsibly. And if you find yourself “hallucinating” that your pet is gone…always look again!

~ by suniyee on August 30, 2008.