...and knowing what she doesn't like. My tank.

I feel the need for a tank, to store things I like.

Tanks have always creeped me out. Something about objects being confined to a small space maybe. I was never one to volunteer to take home the class pet for example.

As I was growing up, my mom had several fish tanks. I think at one point there were like four of them. Hours we would spend in the pet store waiting for the tall, thin, geeky guy to try to get the exact squirmy thing she wanted into those little plastic bags. Walking through the aisles of bubbling filters nauseated me. And then there was the smell of fish food and the fact that there were always, always going to be a few dead ones floating in there or residing at the bottom.

And then with the fish came the dreams, nightmares really, about the fish swimming outside their tank. Sure they would be fine at first but eventually they were going to dry up. Most of the time, I woke up before that happened.

They were just so confined and so often had to be flushed down the toilet. It wasn't fair. But setting them free wouldn't exactly have been humane either. Where they going to go? Who is going feed them? Eat them?

I remember reading an article in the Daily News about a piranha that was found in Campbell Creek in Anchorage. Some family friends who had a piranha cooped up in a dark, dank, algae ridden mess came to mind and I thought, "Now, someone had the right idea." I bet those days, before that omnivorous little bugger was found out, were the best of it's life.

I, on the other hand, never had the guts to free the masses. For one thing dealing with my mom afterward would have been ridiculous and I guess I saw, though I didn't understand, at all, the happiness they brought her. They were her thing, what she liked.

Though I still have issues with containment, especially when it comes to living creatures, perhaps this space can be my thing. I'll fill it with what I like.