Let Me Bag that For You

The haunting remains of Fin 'n Feathers pet store today.

If you need to transport a live fish or cricket somewhere by plastic bag, I can help you out. I can grab and tie the bag so fast that there is a bubble of air trapped at the top, thus giving you time to hurry home and add your fish to an aquarium or feed the crickets to your tarantula. 

I forgot that I knew how to do this because it's not something required in my current day to day. But I had to do this recently while working a rare nature house shift (oh how I've grown). The salamanders needed their crickets and the crickets had to wait under someone's desk for just a few more hours. Thus I saved them (temporarily) with my nifty plastic bag manoeuvre and also the office was saved from crickets running wild. 

Cricket containment and oxygen is not so funny, but that I have an ingrained body memory of doing this task is funny to me, because with it comes a flood of memories. 

Cast your mind back Dear Reader. It was the 1980s and the radio was thick with New Wave and Kenny Rogers duets. A heady time indeed.  A time for me that was infused with the hopes and dreams that a first job in Canada's suburbs entails. Fittingly, I asked myself not, "How can I plan for my future and save this money for my education?" but "What will I buy at the mall next week with all the money I made at the mall last week?"

Orange Julius - Check
MIcrowave pizza from the counter next to the Orange Julius - Check
Chocolate covered coffee beans from Debbie at the kitchen store - Check
The new Bob & Doug album from Sam the Record Man - Check
A Goody hairbrush from K-Mart - Check

And of course oil for my Pinto that was getting me back and forth to the mall, because it was the burbs in the 80s and busses and biking were unheard of and frowned upon. That Pinto went through a lot of oil.

These were not the salad days, but they were the formative years, I realized while recently bagging up those crickets. I didn't know then I wasn't just learning how to bag fish, I was learning how to live. And that is why I recommend Waldorf schools and homeschooling in the country for your children. Keep them away from the malls!

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