Meghan Cox Gurdon on a hamster is cheaper than sushi
By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
Examiner Columnist
July 2, 2009
"Did you hear? We're getting a hamster!"
"I know, except it's not a hamster, it's a guinea pig. Two of them! They're half price so it's like you only pay for one!"
"Mummy, did you really say the girls can get two guinea pigs?"
"I did not! I said I'd consider it. But I said I consider it unlikely."
"Hah, she did not say so, girls."
"Well, I--"
"You did, too, you said Unlikely which means Maybe and that means Probably which means--Yay!"
One girl turned to the other, and they both resumed clapping and bouncing in place. "Two guinea pigs! And maybe a hamster!" The smallest girl joined them, jigging about in cheerful obliviousness.
"Not so fast. Daddy and I need to discuss--"
Daddy was smiling from a distance with what I suddenly realized was a traitorous gleam in his eye. A few minutes earlier he had casually assented when the children begged to go into a pet store bearing the sign: "Lost our lease."
Though a member of the family's pro-pet contingent, he has no interest in hamsters or gerbils or whatnot. I began to perceive that I was the target of a larger campaign of which this constituted an early bit of shelling, so as to soften me up.
At that point, the boy sidled up and said in a low voice: "Ok, but if the girls get two guinea pigs, I need one for my own room. Don't worry, I'll use my own money, I'll clean out the cage and take it for walks and everything."
"Children, wait - wait. Seriously. Just because the pet store is going out of business and all the creatures are on sale does not - does not! - mean that they automatically belong at our houseÉ"
Blah blah blah, I went on, feeling ungenerous and sulky and yet inwardly desperate to fend off the acquisition of any creature that would have claims on the person who in most households winds up caring for family pets, which is, ahem, generally neither the father nor the children.
Other mothers have urged me with Ancient Mariner-like intensity to stop my ears to the siren song of pet ownership. "Don't listen to the children," they have insisted, "it'll be your pet-- your pet-- your pet--!"
So dogged was I in my prevarication, yet torn, too, because, after all, fluffy creatures are lovely and bring joy, that somehow I let slip the word "dog." It was probably along the lines of "that's why I want to wait at least a year, for instance, before we even think of getting aÉ"
But it was fatal. Faces lit up. Crafty children pounced. "Mummy says we can get a dog!"
"No, no, no, you misunderstand--"
"A dog, and a hamster, and a guinea pig!"
"Two guinea pigs!"
"What about two dogs?"
My husband beamed, and fired another round: "Oh, just one dog, I think."
"Ack," said I, "Dogs are great, but they need walking and feeding and I feel as though I barelyÉ I love dogs, butÉ we should wait a bit longer," until the youngest is a bit older, I meant.
Hopeful little faces fell. Mildly, my husband remarked: "If we wait, our eldest may miss out - children only really benefit from a dog before the age of about 15."
This was a sneaky dart indeed, but I was instantly hit with a crueler one, as the face of the middle child, who's nine, crumpled: "Please let us get a dog while I'm still a child! If we wait I won't be able to enjoy him because I'll be like a grownup and I won't have any fun!"
"Darling," I soothed, crouching down. "I'm not saying we're never getting a dog, but Daddy and I--" here I shot him a reproachful look- "need to talk about it. Dogs are expensive, you know, and--"
"Aha!" said the child, recovering with unbecoming swiftness, "But guinea pigs are not expensive. And hamsters are even cheaper! Do you know that one hamster, on sale, costs less than two California rolls?"
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
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