8:92) Hope O'Keeffe 26-JAN-98 12:50

I began keeping fish when a friend was arrested. Four years of dealing substantial amounts of cocaine, and I never connected the dots. I couldn't take any of his dogs, or the new puppies, or the cats, and it was rather too late to try to take care of my friend, so I took his fish. They died, of course, as fish will when you don't know what you're doing, and I bought more fish, and they pretty much died too, and I learned a bit and now the fish mostly stay alive except when they kill each other or die of old age (how long does a fish live anyhow?) or splashing toddler fingers and gifts -- a stick of bubble gun, a walkie talkie -- tossed into the tank, or benign neglect brought on by the passive aggressiveness of knowing that when I leave my house I will leave the fish behind. Just as I close the bathroom door so I can't hear the incessent dribbling in the bathtub that will no longer be mine, so too I let the algae and the nitrate levels grow unhindered, and feed them just often enough to mostly keep them alive.