PAST: Catching Minnows

Before my sister and I had goldfishes for pets, we had minnows. Not the kind that you get at the bait shop but wild ones.

Using our mother’s washed-out ice cream pails (she never throws anything away) we’d scoop cold water from the crick that runs between our house and the neighbors as if we were bailing out a boat. My sister's long blonde hair dipped into the water and would have left with the current if it wasn't attached to her head. Mine was always pulled back, a mousey brown color. My sister had a hard expression, but she was beautiful. I didn't think much of myself at that age. I was "ok." Nothing special too look at. I had the awkward stage that last too long.

With every pail full, I then cupped my hands like a sieve, and my sister slowly poured the murky water into my hands, so I could catch the minnows as they rode the stream of water down.

Once we had what we wanted, we dumped everything else—the snails, the water sliders, the slime that stuck to the bottom—back into the crick. Every now and then we’d catch a frog in the pail. Pushing it in my face, my sister would hold its back legs tight, so tight that I thought she might break them, but that was the only way to hold a frog if you didn’t want it to get away from you. I never held one, never touched one, not until I got to high school and we had to dissect them in Biology, but I don’t think you could consider them frogs. They smelled like science: unnatural, phony like plastic dolls left in the sun too long.

After we caught enough minnows to call it a school, we’d take them in the house. Setting them on the window sill in the kitchen where our parents put their car keys and junk mail that didn’t need to be opened right away. The pail sat there until they began to smell and our father would tell us to get rid of them. They weren’t pets.

We’d fish again, and again, and again. . . . We didn’t care that we had to start all over, didn’t care that we were continuously losing. The minnows were never really ours.

I think about all the things that I try and catch now, but, now it is different cause I care.