Pet Time
 
Back when we were in school, time was measured in grade years (and summer, of course). Teachers, friends and events all easily fit into little parcels of memory and lined up neatly on shelves in the brain, like a shoebox with “Third Grade” written on the side.  I believe this is a cruel plot undertaken by the government to turn us all into forgetful, bumbling idiots once we graduate and lose that built-in time-measuring system. (I graduated in ’95… was it ‘97 or ’99 when I bought my car?) But, my friends, there is hope. We can thwart that plot with a super-secret, lovable, furry arsenal: pets.
 
Oh yes. Pets not only represent all the things the Humane Society would have us believe they do (companionship, responsibility, compassion); they also represent eras. And in this way, they’re terribly useful -- perhaps because their life spans are so much shorter than ours, pets help us to measure time. Case in point: I’m recalling to my friends the time that my little brother fell and smashed his head open on a neighbor’s bumper. I give the event a certain year and my brother chirps up, correcting me: no, it wasn’t that year, because we didn’t have the canary in 1984, and we did have the canary when he split his head open. The canary didn’t have anything to do with my brother’s trip to the hospital for stitches, of course, but that doesn’t matter, because the little guy was there. His presence acts as an anchor in a sea of memories. See?
 
In fact, as I ruminate on it, I realize that the presence of pets gives structure and meaning to the years of my past, like some kind of personalized astrological Chinese calendar, thus:
 
1981: the era of the fish. I was a toddler. I rode my tricycle up and down the sidewalk.  I loved Scooby-Doo.  And I watched as the expensive, pretty fish that complemented the neon gravel and hot pink plastic reefs in the aquarium quickly learned to float upside-down and then were carried off to the bathroom morgue.  There’s a lesson here: being pretty won’t save you from being flushed down the toilet after you’re dead.
 
1984: the era of the guinea pig. I began grade school. We moved to a new house in my aunt’s neighborhood. I met my first “best friend.” She had two guinea pigs.  We used to take them out of the cage after school and hold them (but not for too long, or they would pee on you). They ate beautiful green lettuce and lived on pungent cedar chips -- guinea pig paradise, in my opinion. But, other than eating, peeing, and squealing if you squeezed them, they didn’t do much. Lesson: you can live a meaningless existence, even in Utopia.
 
1987: the era of the canary. I was in middle school. I planted a garden and wrote poetry. On the request of my mother, we brought home a little yellow bird that she named Alex, who was as light and sweet as a puff of lemon meringue.  Alex lived in a cage in the kitchen, near the outside window, where he could see the outside birds. He didn’t seem to envy their freedom, though. He was most cheerful when my mother ran water at the sink; he’d sing up a storm. Lesson: joy is where you find it.
 
1990: the era of the cat. Junior High and High school, baby. I sang in the choir, joined drama club, learned how to drive. We adopted a stray kitten from under a neighbor’s car. She was cute and fun to play with for a while. But then she grew up and became a moody old bitch, at which time she was relegated to the basement. Lesson: no matter how cute you were as a kid, nobody likes you when you’re a moody old bitch.
 
See how this works?  I can figure out how old I was when I got my braces off because I remember playing with the cat when I came back from the orthodontist.  I remember that the last time we made strawberry jam, Alex was singing in the background, so it must have been before 1990.  Is there any other measuring system that is so vividly personal and specific?  
 
And what about 2005? Well, today I don’t have a pet (unless you count my boyfriend Ryan). And maybe that’s my problem. Today, time drags along devoid of meaning because it is unmeasured by beaks or paws. I remember that I moved down to Texas a couple of years ago, but was it two, or three?  Or maybe four??  So maybe I need to go out and get a pet -- begin a new era, as it were -- and establish a new point of reference that will stick in my brain and help me to remember which year it was that we got the new couch.
 
Ryan, you always said you wanted a dog…

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Laura submitted her column, and guess what she's doing next -- going to Disney World! Seriously.