- December 4, 2025
I was working on my laptop one afternoon when my 10-year-old daughter, Kennedy, sat down next to me, with her hands in her lap and a cartoonishly innocent smile on her lips.
It was clear she wanted to ask me for something I didn’t want to give her, so I tried ignoring her as long as I could. I was concerned she might want me to buy her a cat, and everyone knows I’m not a pet person. But I could see that she wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, her eyebrows were rising dangerously higher and higher on her forehead. Finally, I relented: “Yes?”
“Can I get a fish?” she asked.
Whew! If that’s all it would take to satisfy her craving for a pet, I could live with it. A fish isn’t a major commitment, as long as it’s a betta fish that costs less $5. We even had a one-gallon tank in a closet somewhere from her last betta fish.
“Sure,” I said.
Her celebration was so thorough and intense — all over a fish — that it also served as a rebuke of my anti-pet curmudgeonliness.
A few days later, I found myself surrounded by floor-to-ceiling aquariums in the back corner of a local pet store. Our mission: Don’t leave until you have a fish in a plastic bag.
Should be simple enough. Just pick out the least expensive betta and go.
“What you want to do,” an employee at the store explained, “is set up the tank — ideally about 5 gallons — and then wait for two weeks before adding the fish.”
“Two weeks?” Kennedy said in horror because she might not be getting a fish tonight.
“Five gallons?” I asked in disbelief because the tank was supposed to be free.
The employee explained that the water needs to be conditioned for the fish. How is that accomplished? Nitrites naturally turn into nitrates thanks to natural bacteria, so you just drop in some fish food and wait. One gallon of water is extremely difficult to keep clean and healthy for a fish, so a larger tank is the best practice.
The store was scheduled to close in about five minutes at this point, so I tried to help Kennedy see reality: No fish tonight.
But she wasn’t giving up.
Another employee walked by, so we asked about our options. He reiterated the advice we’d already received but did show another option. The store does sell one-gallon jugs of pretreated water for $15.
I swallowed. I averted my eyes from Kennedy’s hopeful, plaintive expression. I tried to come to terms with what I was hearing: Our tap water, which costs about half a penny, was no good, so if we wanted a fish, we needed this fishy holy water with built in bacteria, for $15? Meaning, we're paying 3,000 times more for this water?
And by the way, we also need a filter so the fish doesn’t die from stagnant water.
And a heater so the fish doesn’t die from the temperatures dropping below 75 degrees.
And little colorful aquarium pebbles so the fish doesn’t die from inadequate breakdown of bacteria.
And enrichment elements such as silk plants, so that the fish doesn’t die of boredom.
Let’s just say this was going to cost a lot more than my budget of $5.
But of course, dear reader, if you’re a parent, you know that at this point, there is no turning back.
At the checkout, the extremely kind and patient employee said, “You might want to keep this receipt. It shows the return policy.”
“Return policy?” I asked.
“If something happens in the next seven days, you just bring in the body, and a sample of the water, so we can test it to see what happened, and you can pick out a replacement.”
I didn’t want to contemplate this fish’s chances of survival.
About 15 minutes after the store was supposed to have closed, we checked out, and I carried the bag of supplies to the car, while Kennedy carried a long, cylindrical plastic bag, filled two-thirds with air, tied in a knot on top. It was about the size of a long sleeve of popcorn. The bottom third of the bag was full of water — straight from the store’s aquarium. And in that water was one blue-and-red betta fish happily frolicking, to Kennedy’s delight.
The delight was so pure and so wonderful that I felt that rebuke yet again. With the exception of a fish, pets have never appealed to me because of the amount of work and money required. A pet can teach a child to be responsible, but I have always assumed that, in the end, the parent ends up getting stuck doing all the work. Indeed, I was the one to change the water of the last fish we had.
But as we drove home, I felt some of Kennedy’s joy vicariously. Maybe, I thought, even if I end up taking care of the fish sometimes, Kennedy’s joy was a good enough reason to have it. Maybe, when Kennedy is feeling alone or sad, she can sit in her room and feel some comfort emanating from the light in the tank.
At home, I helped Kennedy rinse the aquarium pebbles, and I poured into the tank the nitrate-rich gallon of water, and finally, after draining the store’s aquarium water from the bag, as instructed, we let the fish squirm out of the bag, ruffling its feathery fins, and plop into its new home. The fish also now had a name: Finny McCringle. Just like that, we had a new family member.
Before I went to bed, I stood outside Kennedy’s room and was about to knock when I overheard her saying, in a sweet, quiet voice, “Good night, little fishy."
