HERMIT crabs! I asked for a dog and I got HERMIT crabs. Wow. You leave out one word... whole other meaning.
As a kid, I didn't want for much. I was blessed with a relatively generous mother who I think also "generally" felt guilty for marrying my step-father, heretofore referred to as step-bother, the grumpiest man to walk the earth. So I "generally" got what I asked for. Except for the year that I asked for a dog and somehow ended up with hermit crabs. Not a gerbil, or a goldfish, or a bird, or hell, not even a turtle. Hermit crabs. Crustaceans. Seriously, that's just a very tiny notch up from cockroach.
Here's how it all went down:
I was twelve and even though we already had a home inhabited by two cats and a dog, I wanted a puppy. A puppy that was mine. My mom and step-bother had the appropriately dubious response to a twelve years old’s request to possess a living creature. "You’ll take care of it for a month, get bored like you do with everything else and then we’ll end up doing all the work."
“I do not get bored!” I declared, stung.
My mother shot a conspiratorial glance at my step-bother, drew in a heavy breath…
“How about the numerous clothes that you just HAD to have but now won’t wear?”
“Painter’s pants are soooo last season, mom.”
“Juggling?”
“I was allergic to the bean bags!”
Field hockey?
“Ok. That was not at ALL what I expected it to be.”
She paused for dramatic effect, crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow…
"Unicycle?"
“Ok, ok. But this time will be different. I swear!"
Thus began the bizarre set of requirements that had to be fulfilled before any further puppy discussion would be entertained. In retrospect, I suspect that most of it was more a distraction than anything. That secretly they hoped by the time I'd completed all the prerequisites, I'd have moved on from puppies to hot air balloons or some such thing. (Fortunately for me tenacity, when necessary, was something I always possessed in spades.)
My first requirement - and this one's a head scratcher - was satisfactory completion of a Speed Reading course. Huh? What does speed readin' have to do with dog-ownin'? I never was entirely clear on that one, but if you'll take a bit of a circuitous route with me… this is my best guess: Faster readin' breeds faster homework-doin' which leaves more time for dog walkin'. (Did I mention my step-bother was a bit of a hillbilly?)
Second requirement.... hermit crabs. I came home from school one day and in my room was a glass aquarium with a food bowl and two large seashells inside. As I got closer I realized the shells were MOVING. I retreated slowly, horrified. "MMMMMMOOOOOOMMMM?!" I heard her laughing from the back of the house. Evil!
"Look what Paul got you," she said still laughing as she walked in the room. I made a mental note that she walked a wide arc around the cage, giving it much more berth than necessary. So Mom's afraid of them too. Good to know. Actually George Michael and Peanut Butter weren't terrible pets in the end. (What do you expect? I was twelve. I was still straddling that razor thin line between sweets and boys. Come to think of it… I do still really like peanut butter. Not so much George Michael.) Their upkeep was pretty simple and I actually grew to appreciate, if not LIKE, them a little bit.
When I left for the summer to visit my dad, I expected that my crabs, er... HERMIT crabs,would be well cared for. This as, it turns out, was not entirely in the cards for G.M. and P.B. In his infinite wisdom, step-bother put the crabs in the sandbox outside and made a crude cage out of window screening. Anyone else see where this is going? Hey Flash! They're crabs?! They have claws?! To this day, I like to think of little George Michael and Peanut Butter, escape artists extraordinaire, as living it up on some extravagant beach in Savannah. What's the shelf life on a hermit crab anyway?
As for the rest of the mandates for puppy ownership, I have no idea what else was in store for me. But the next day I got my puppy. I suspect out of guilt. And I fed and walked and played with her everyday.... for about two months. Before I moved on to hot air balloons.
