mariness

I have to confess: I wanted them.

A picture appeared in virtually every comic book I saw, showing the smiling faces of a family of Sea Monkeys, who looked like some tortured set of mermaids created by a demented wizard. I knew the real sea monkeys would look nothing like that picture - I'd seen pictures of fish and insects and dinosaurs with strange head shapes, but none of those walked on two legs and the dinosaurs were gone. But still, I desperately wanted to know what they were. Did they really look like monkeys? Or little fish? Could they really be trained? Could I have happiness in a bowl?

The problem was, we lived in Italy, and the few comic books we had always came a few months later, brought over by parents on business trips to the States. Which created other issues; our parents kept bringing back Batman, and we wanted Spider-man. Issues were eagerly and fiercely traded on the back of the bus, with everyone hunched over the comic to see what had happened to Spider-Man next. It wasn't that we disliked Batman, mind you -- this was in the Brave and the Bold days, when Batman did a lot of orbiting around earth and teaming up with various other superheroes to prevent people from setting off nuclear bombs which was all kinda cool. But Spider-Man was funny. I also wanted more Supergirl comics, because Supergirl was blonde, like me, and a girl, but unlike me, she could do absolutely anything she wanted to -- fly, punch holes through space satellites, whatever -- and what she apparently wanted to do (in the Brave and the Bold days) was solve mysteries and stop bad guys, which was awesome. Later, I grew impatient with the perfection and superstrength (and questioned why anyone would choose to punch out satellites while wearing a skating costume), but at the time, I wanted to be Supergirl. I still wanted to fly, even if my flying lessons a few years back had not gone at all well for anyone concerned. I caught glimpses of other girls in the comics, too, but not many of them (and for some reason, our parents never seemed to bring back Wonder Woman comics, or if they did, the comics were so unmemorable that they have slipped my mind).

In this fantasy universe, anything could be true. Even Sea Monkeys. But at the same time, girls weren't flying into space and punching space satellites. So I looked at the Sea Monkeys, and wondered. I made up little tales, little explanations.

I had no way of ordering them from Italy, none. And even when we returned to the U.S., I had no way of getting the postal order together to pay for the Sea Monkeys. Instead, we got a worm (this was not approved of) and then a hamster (more approved of) and then a dog. The dog couldn't exactly do tricks - he meant well, but was a Dog of Little Brain - but he was soft and furry and playful and he actually found just the sight of me coming down the stairs marvelously exciting, and I figured I would never find out what Sea Monkeys actually were.

"Brine shrimp," explained someone in college.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I was crushed."

Only later did I realize that brine shrimp are actually awesomely cool and beautiful critters. But that's another post.

This is the astonishing, and genuinely shocking story, of the man who almost got the world to understand the magic of brine shrimp. Read to the end.