I used to have fish. I told the guy at Petco that I needed the heartiest two fish five dollars could buy. He gave me two sort of generic looking gold fish - platties they're called - that's them on the right. They were hearty, as promised. I fed them mostly regularly and cleaned the tank. I got other, fancier fish along the way, but they couldn't thrive under my half-hearted care. My two platties were named Jason and Kori, as a unit we referred to them as Mates of State.
The wife and I took a trip to Alaska a few years back. While we were gone, I'm pretty sure I asked someone to come over and feed the fish. I'd like to think I did, at least. I know that when we got home they were still alive, happy as fish can be, swimming around in their little water world. I smiled at them, waved, and "what the fuck? Is that a baby fish in there? Babe, come here and look at this! I think there's a tiny fish in there! Holy shit. There's another one."
Our first pair of twins was born.*
*Four years later, toting our human twins through the Coney Island Aquarium I learned the following fact about fish reproduction: most fish are oviparous, meaning the egg is fertilized outside the mother's body. But a small percentage are "live bearers," meaning the egg is fertilized and develops within the mother's body and the babies can swim immediately upon birth. Platties are the latter.**
**Our human twins are a combination of the two.
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