A Thing of Beauty

In the second grade, I got some pet seahorses. Not Sea Monkeys® like my other friends had. These were honest-to-god seahorses—teeny ones, only about the size of my pinky fingernail, but genuine, bonafide hippocampinae.

I only had them for a week until they met their sad, mysterious demise, but our short time together was sweet.

They seemed too small to bury and flushing seemed sort of harsh, so I turned to the packaging information for wisdom. At the end of the care and feeding instructions, there was a section on what to do with them after they perished. One of the suggestions was to “make beautiful jewelry.” All one needed was a barrette, some glue, gold spray paint and a few dead seahorses.

I stole a barrette from my sister Gail’s room and carefully adhered the dearly departed with three tiny dollops of Elmer’s glue. Once it had dried (which seemed to take forever) I hit them with a gentle mist of gold spray paint from Mark’s model car supplies. Voila!

It was the prettiest thing I had ever seen and I knew just who the recipient would be... Angie! I had a big crush on her and if this didn’t win her over, nothing would.

I placed it carefully in a box the next morning thinking that recess would be the perfect time to present it to her. That afternoon, nervously, yet giddily I walked across the playground to the tricky bars. There was Angie. She was radiant. 

“I made this for you,” I said handing her the small white box. She raised an eyebrow and opened it. She took one look, eyes opened wide and asked me what they were. “They’re seahorses!” I beamed. She dropped the box with a giant “Ick!” and ran screaming toward the other girls.

I gathered up the pieces and walked back into the building.

Maybe a bolo tie for one of the boys would have been a better idea.