Thursday, October 06, 2005

Very Significant

As a child, I always doubted my parents when they said that they loved me and my brother the same. The EXACT same? How is that possible? We learned in chemistry and physics that there are always margins of error when measuring quantities. Remember Significant Digits? 1 is NOT the same as 1.000000. Hell no. And remember that pesky algebra proof that 2 equals 1? Quantities are really a load of bullshit.

Enter my two children, Murph (rest, dear, rest) and Red. And I totally get it. Murph, the eldest, taught me what it means to be a pet owner. I learned just as much raising Murph as Murph did growing from a young Beta fish to a three year old Beta fish.

Red is different. Everything is new again with Red. When I feed him, he gets excited and flaps his fins. He doesn't swim to the top of the bowl to eat his food immediately, like Murph did. He prefers to lurk mid-bowl and dive for the little Beta Morsels one at a time. I have to chuck them in there kind of hard so that they sink instead of float. It's great exercise for us both.

We say it all the time, but it really is funny how two pets with the same owner can grow up to be so different. Murph was definitely an East Coast fish. Always on the move, too busy to play catch with his food. Red, on the other hand, is living the good San Francisco life. He's all about playtime and basking in the sun.

It's good to be a proud Mama again. I love you both the same. (Give or take a couple ten thousandths of a percent.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Never thought of fish that way. Maybe I need to go out there and get myself a little hermit crab to figure all of this out... We had a bigger fish tank, 20 gal or so and well it always stunk but looked cool at night. And well my dad had to help clean it because it was too big. Smaller is better when it comes to fish tanks...