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Sitting in front of my wall of fish tanks, thinking back...
1968...I recall a waiting room, Dr. Hammett's kissing gouramis, in an exotic world of pink gravel, plastic mermaids, purple plants. Growing up as one of three brothers in a world of poison ivy, bicycle jumping, swamp exploring and rock climbing, I saw a lot of those fish.
When us kids were all done with the various examinations, tetanus shots, and stitches, we accompanied Mom into the Doctor's business office. He personally wrote out the bill and accepted payment.
I recall Mr. Wilson's science class in 1970. He had fish tanks around the perimeter, and at the front of the room, a 90 gallon tank with a lone oscar. We thought that oscar was the most exotic thing in all creation. "They got a piranha at the pet store...Yeah, but Mr. Wilson has an oscar." When Richie Morrow got out of line, Mr. Wilson grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out of his chair. He then exchanged the armhold for a handful of the kid's left ear, and holding it at an elevation slightly higher than God's design, walked him rapidly to the principal's office.
I recall the simple ten gallon metal frame tank my little brother received for his birthday in 1973. It was set up in the corner of the family room, next to the tv. The little tank had rainbow gravel, a box filter, and a full metal cover with lights. It housed mollies, platies, zebras, and a sickly angelfish. My mother made my brother change the floss whenever it got slightly dirty. (He went through a lot of floss and a lot of fish, until we went over to Mr. Wilson's house, and he set us all straight.) When I sat in front of that tank and peered in, it took away all my pre-teen concerns and I would drift away, lost in the miniature ten gallon world.
Over a quarter of a century later, sitting in front of my wall of tanks, I think about the changes.
The kissing gourami is purely mass-market fodder. We'd much rather have some bizarre anabantoid found only in a certain ditch by the Ho Chi Minh trail at $200 a pair. The family doctor is now part of a group that works as a team in something called a Wellness Center, and it would never occur to him to handle the billing.
The oscar is now as mundane as a cichlid can get. In the classroom, budgets have taken money away from anything you can't directly attribute to profitability later in junior's life. Here in New Jersey we fund football programs and look the other way when players commit unspeakable acts. But if Mr. Wilson laid a finger on Richie today, he would be in court.
I sit in front of fourteen tanks, most of them 20 or 55 gallons. I have a couple of 10 gallons running that I rarely even look at. Forget the rainbow gravel, I have exotic rainbow fish from the other side of the world. I have cichlids that weren't even discovered when my brother set up that little tank, and I'm always looking for better ones.
I'd trade all the fish I have for just an hour with Dr. Hammett's, Mr. Wilson's, or my brother's fish tank.
