Honest! There’s a Guppy In Here

“I wish I had a pet!” I made the saddest face a seven-year-old can make.

At seven, I had a valid complaint. I wasn’t protesting bedtime or my dad’s refusal to let me get bangs—though also very legitimate. I was upset because I didn’t have a pet of any kind. My mom needed to understand the depth of my suffering: no parakeet, no puppy, no guinea pig. Not even a turtle in a dish with a plastic palm tree.

I explained to my mom that the after-school pet show required a pet.

I slouched in a chair at our yellow Formica kitchen table, my bottom lip probably pushed out to emphasize my protest. I imagined my classmates at home, that very minute, gathering their pets before returning to the school playground for the pet show later that day.

Mom thought about this and then said, “You have a pet!”

I watched her take an empty glass jar into the living room and dunk it in my dad’s tropical fish aquarium. She filled it halfway with water. She took the fishnet and swooped up a baby guppy and plopped it in the jar.

“Now you have a pet,” she said, handing the jar to me.

A tiny fish for a pet? That didn’t seem like a real pet—not like a cuddly cat or a cute bunny with floppy ears.

 

But I was desperate. With the jar in hand, I carefully marched off to the school’s pet show across the street from our house.

“Oooh. Whadda ya have there?” asked the adults working at the pet show. Kids crowded around me, wondering what I had in the jar. The sight of huge eyeballs peering into his temporary home must have seemed like a horror show for my guppy.

The crowd hovering around me attracted a news reporter who had the assignment to write about the pet show.

The reporter asked me a few questions, then asked if he could take my picture. Soon, the show’s emcee announced I had entered the smallest pet at the show. A recognition I hadn’t considered.

The next day, my picture with the guppy appeared in the Garden Grove News. My parents bought every copy at the newspaper stand. By then, I had returned the baby guppy to my dad’s tank.

I had long forgotten the pet show memory until recently when my sister found the old newspaper clipping in storage and sent me a copy.

The clipping is now framed and hanging in my hallway. It reminds me that small things can make a big difference in someone’s life as well as in our own. Small actions like kindness, generosity, and gratitude. Moreover, it reminds me that my mom wanted me to be happy and dreamed up a way to make it happen.

A baby guppy brought a smile to my face for several days. He made me a star.

Complaining (sometimes) has its rewards.

 

βω♥