I am deeply ashamed to admit that I missed an important observation last week. May 16 was National Sea Monkey Day (and coincidentally, my dad’s birthday but one important day at a time). I’m guessing most of you aren’t aware that sea monkeys, the near microscopic brine shrimp still sold today as pets, played an important role in my development as a child. If you’re wondering how that could be, read on…
MONKEY SEA by Rick McNeal
I was just 10 years old when I lost my innocence.
In the 1960s my hometown of Menasha made Mayberry seem like Gomorrah on a Saturday night. If the home of Andy and Opie could be described as “a sleepy little town”, then Menasha seemed practically narcoleptic. To me, the works of Norman Rockwell were less like paintings of an idealized American life and more like contemporary snapshots that one of my neighbors could have taken with their Brownie Instamatic. Even as the rest of the world was torn asunder by war, protest and upheaval, Menasha (at least from my preadolescent perspective) remained tranquil and serene.
While my family was far from being the Cleavers, my hometown was less like Mayberry and more like Mayfield, the home of Wally and the Beav. The downtown had a candy store, a five and dime, a bike shop, and Rudy’s Magazine Rack, which stocked all the “neatest” comic books! In short, Menasha had everything a kid in the 1960’s could want (with the possible exception of a cape and cowl-wearing superhero that helped police whenever they flashed a spotlight in the nighttime sky). However, it would be one of those brightly colored 12-cent superhero sagas from Rudy’s that would be the vehicle of my eventual undoing.
One summer afternoon while lazing under the apple tree in my backyard and perusing the pages of the latest issue of “The Justice League of America”, I came upon something that not only caught my eye but captured my imagination. It was……an advertisement.
Growing up in idyllic Menasha had insulated me from the types of ruthless predators who prey upon young, impressionable minds. Still, I wasn’t stupid! My fourteen comic books a month habit exposed me to many pieces of enticing advertising that even my naïve, 10-year-old brain recognized as being way too good to be true. Hey, who wouldn’t like to have x-ray vision just like Superman, but X-Ray Specs? Get real! I knew if you really could get x-ray vision with a $1.25 pair of cardboard glasses my 5th-grade teacher, Sister Mary Knucklebreaker, would have bought them just to see who had gum or spitballs hidden in their tightly clenched, ruler-bruised hands.
No, it was another ad that offered an allure so great my young, gullible mind would not allow me to think for even a moment that it was anything but totally on the up and up. And it was for that reason that I began saving my pennies for my own “bowl full of fun”.
From the day that I mailed a dollar to a mysterious Post Office Box at Lenox Hill Station, New York, New York, until the day they arrived, I thought of nothing else but what it will be like to have what the ad described as “a whole tumbling, playful, happy troupe” of …….Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys!
The ad depicted six happy, smiling creatures with pointy ears and long swishing tails. The copy detailed the daily antics of these “fantastic underwater buffoons”. It said these “showoffs” would “turn cartwheels of joy”, “scratch each other’s backs” and “chase each other in a playful game of tag where the loser gets caught by his tail and is spun in a dizzy circle” (a process no less ridiculous than the one by which we elect presidents).
Each day for almost two months I awaited the arrival of our local Cliff Clavin, knowing that “neither rain nor snow nor dark of night” would keep him from delivering my Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys on his appointed rounds!
The day my sea monkeys finally arrived was like Christmas, Halloween, my birthday and Arbor Day rolled all into one. (What can I say, my family loved Arbor Day. I think my dad was actually half-druid.)
With hands trembling like Michael J. Fox after too many Red Bulls, I opened a packet marked “genetic material”. (I find it amusing that the next time I would see that phrase in print would be 30 years later in connection with the Clinton impeachment hearings. Did we truly spend 60 million dollars to find out if it was really Bill Clinton’s sea monkeys on that blue dress?)
As instructed, I poured the “genetic material” into a fishbowl of purified H2O. In just moments, the bowl of clear water was miraculously transformed into a bowl of murky water that vaguely resembled one into which somebody had just blown their nose.
Upon examination with a powerful magnifying glass, I finally spotted my new “pets”. They were each about half the size of a pimple on a gnat’s ass. They had no pointy ears, performed no cartwheels, scratched no backs, and played no tag! Some, however, did seem to have long tails that would eventually fall off. I would ultimately learn that the “tails” were, in fact, the sea monkeys grunting one out so slowly it would seem they existed entirely on a diet of cheese. Turns out, the only real talent with which sea monkeys are blessed is the remarkable ability to pass turds 5 times the length of their own bodies. Granted, that’s no small feat. If a human could do that it would almost certainly guarantee them their own reality show on Fox. But it surely wasn’t the kind of “comic antics” the ad had promised. In short, I’d been had!
So it was, that this former wide-eyed innocent was led by these “fantastic underwater buffoons” down the road of skepticism and doubt. Oscar Wilde famously wrote that “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Well, at age 10, I knew the price of sea monkeys was $1.00. But I’d learned their value was approximately jack squat! So, I guess my sea monkeys didn’t quite make me a “cynic”. But these practically microscopic creatures had violated my trust and robbed me of my innocence. And that’s a far more remarkable trick than some silly old cartwheel and back-scratching.
[Amazon]
