Elements of Time: The Sea Monkeys

By Craig: As you age, the way that you perceive things change. When you are a small child it is hard to differentiate between fiction and reality, or what is real and what is not real. The ability to do so comes with experience and age. Even as adults there is still a lingering uncertainty between the physiological world and the ontological one. In other words, I see a tree...How do I know how that tree will react in my presence? How do I know that it will not reach out and grab me with its long branches and crush me like an anaconda crushing a goat. I know because I have lived among trees for the past 45 years. Not so for a small child who becomes lost in the forest, or for that matter an adult native of the Sahara desert who has never seen a tree. Who knows what that tree might be capable of!

So it was with me during the summer of 1975...Or was it 1976? I forget. Whatever year it might have been it doesn't really matter. I was around 7 or 8 years old when I opened up a comic book and saw the full page ad for Sea Monkey's.

Here it was staring me in the face. "Enter the Wonderful World Of Amazing Live SEA-MONKEYS"  The ad showed the typical 1970s nuclear family smiling at a fishbowl in which lurked these creepy human-like things that swam around for your entertainment. "So Eager To Please-They Can Even Be TRAINED!!" This line was even creepier. So... they are so eager to please....but...but...what if you pissed them off? Although my 7 year old mind didn't actually use this language it must have formulated something similar along those lines.

The add continued: "World famous sea monkeys are So full of surprises you can't stop watching them. They swim, play, scoot, race and do comical tricks and stunts. So easy to grow even an 8-year old child can do so without help."

For a dollar and a quarter plus shipping and handling of course, I could be the proud owner of my own little kingdom. Why it even came equipped with a castle! But something bothered me about the whole deal. I couldn't quite put my finger on it...something was not right. I kept staring at the ad. I went to bed that night thinking about the sea-monkey's. What if I did send away for them? What if they did grow into those sinister looking naked things with the long tails. And then there were those smiles...They seemed fake. Then to my horror I imagined them escaping from the tank at night. I would be sleeping and I would suddenly awaken to hear something scurrying across the floor. Then a pitter patter of feet running across my bed sheets! I would pull the covers over my head but by this time it would be too late. They would be under the blankets as I grabbed my flashlight and my GOD the smiles...those macabre disingenuous smiles were replaced by soulless evil faces with razor sharp teeth! I never ordered the Sea-Monkey's.