One very cool part about being a kid is that this is the only time in your life when you are allowed to have odd, small pets without being ostracized by your peers. But don’t feel special. Your parents only allow vermin into their home to deflect the possibility of getting a dog, which requires way more attention and money. And besides, rodents, birds and lizards are easy to replace when they inevitably croak. I am the pun wizard! Actually, I didn’t mention amphibians. Shit. Can you even remember how many times have you gone on a date and thought you were going to get all fucking sexy with some guy or girl, start making out on the couch and suddenly your olfactory is choked up by the stench of ferrets in the next room over? So then you go to his / her bedroom to getcha, getcha, getcha freak on and afterwards, when you turn on the lights, you realize a boa constrictor in a three-fold fused aquarium was watching you the whole time from 5 feet away? No, no you don’t. Because none of this shit would ever have gone down…because adults with animals like this in their homes don’t go on sexy dates. Back to the Renaissance Festival with you, you freaks! Keep inbreeding. So if you don’t get your chance to have a stupid, useless pet as a kid, remember your life is fucked if you want to make up for lost time as a 32 year old. Unless you live in your mom’s basement and play WOW all day long. ‘Mom, keep the mountain dews coming!’
And in elementary school, the teachers always dumped off their science creatures with some unsuspecting parents. I got 2 hermit crabs, which were actually pretty cool because you don’t really have to feed them or clean them or hang out with them. And when you’re sick of them, you can just throw them in the garbage because they have no souls. I remember my friend, Darcy, took care of a duckling after she raised it for a trimester in highschool. Seriously, a duck? What the hell are you going to do with a duck in the suburbs of Minnesota? They have souls, well, at least half a soul, so they’re really difficult to dispose of. And it stank. But you’re supposed to overlook that because it’s cute and fuzzy.
Well, my favorite useless creature – with a full soul - was a guinea pig, which I got when I was 7. She was really cute. If you have never had a guinea pig or the esteemed pleasure of eliciting heightened emotions from one, know that they sound amaaaazing. It’s is a quick high squeal, typically succeeded by a thousand more squeals, all..day..long! I attribute this to them extremely being happy / content or scared shitless. So given this one thing that they are able to do better than anything on earth, I named my piglet Beepers. Cause she beeps. Note: my friend, Maria, has drawn Beepers and has a sassy MS Paint portrait on her blog. I have two friends. If you can't find her, you are too stupid for this ride.
Beepers and me, man…we did all sorts of no shit together. I’d feel bad and take her out to play once in a while, but you really can’t handle a guinea pig all that well. And you definitely don’t want them running around because they’d leave little brown rice-like dumps everywhere. And they have super long Mandarin nails like the evil dude in Big Trouble In Little China (my boyfriend) and are constantly foraging with their Nosferatu teeth so eventually they would bite you prompting their immediate return to their eternal death chamber / aquarium, stocked full of toilet paper rolls, half eaten carrots and wood chips. What a good life. Really. Best $4.95 my family ever spent at Meijer’s.
We had a cat, too, Bonkers – because she was bonkers (I’m into obvious names for my four-legged companions). Bonkers was so into Beepers. I found her once sitting in the aquarium just chilling and with seemingly no intention of eating the piglet. In fact, Beepers was beeping a bunch. I’m sure she was so happy.
My family is originally from Minnesota. The first summer I had Beepers, my parents sent me back to stay with my grandma for a month. My grandma (Aba) is the shit. She kicks ass for days. So this was a welcome retreat, but I was kind of bummed that my stinkfriend couldn’t come with. My parents promised to keep her company, so it was all good. While I was in MN, I got Tetris, which changed my life forever and now I deal with severe OCD issues when placing groceries on the conveyor for check out.
It had been a month and I had a great time in MN, but it was time to get back to Michigan to my family and beloved animals. I get home and run to my room to check on Beepers and the tank is gone. My mom used to be like a meth head compulsive cleaner so she also painstakingly scrubbed the carpet where the tank had been to remove signs of something resting in that space. So I really couldn’t tell how long the tank had been gone. Then they came in…to have a talk with me. Apparently my mom and dad had a little meeting while I was away – like Day 1 of ‘Operation Get Maria Momez Out of the Fucking House so We Can Do it a Lot This Summer’ – and had decided that Beepers stunk. They thought it would be a fabulous idea to put Beepers in the dank, dark, old home basement for the month to contain her flavor. And then she died on Day 2 of Operation ‘GMMOOTFHSWCDIALTS’ of hypothermia. Poor Beepers. I cried and cried and cried and cried aaaand cried. And then it was a half hour later and I drank some ecto cooler before carrying on with living.
Never after her untimely passing had I expressed the desire for another guinea pig. Not because Beepers was a singular entity in this world and she couldn’t be replaced. No, she was just a guinea pig. It sucked she died, but I wasn’t going to hold vigil and stop eating for 31 hours. When it comes to Somalia, that’s another story. Hot. It just so turns out that my mom carried guilt about this incident for a good long time.
I worked at a bank during college and lived at home…must have been 21 at the time. I was really adult and had a new boyfriend and just thought I was cool as hell. One day I get a call from my mom saying ‘I’ve got a surprise for you waiting at home…’ At this time in my life I didn’t really think I could be surprised with anything cool that I couldn’t buy for myself. WRONG. I get home, walk upstairs to my room and discover that she bought me another goddamned guinea pig. And it’s cage was monstrous and it was just chillaxin in my room beeping and going ape shit. ‘Surprise, I got you another guinea pig to make up for killing Beepers!’ (14 years ago – no, 2/3 of my life ago) Holy shit. Do you know how not excited I was? I was hoping to be all sexy with this new guy, but really couldn’t get it in with something scurrying at the end of your bed, clomping their teeth on a water bottle and beeping whenever your junk touched. I felt like I was failing at a game of Operation.
Thank you, Milton Bradley.
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