One Holiday season my younger brother and I had somehow managed to talk my mother into buying us pet lizards from a local pet store. This memory seems to be so far removed from reality as something that my mother would do that I had to write about it and speak with my siblings as to whether it really happened or not. Going into a pet store was not something out of the ordinary for us as children but taking something home as a pet was an extraordinary accomplishment on our part.
It seems like as a child I was always asking my mom for things and she was always saying no. I know this wasn’t the case because I have photographic and physical evidence that gifts for Christmas or birthdays were not just underwear and socks in our stockings, but action figures, dolls, play sets, toys, and gaming systems for those special events.
As I am now a parent I think of how dangerous a pet store could be. When my child is of an age where she can express her wants or needs I think I will avoid taking her into a pet store at all costs. Taking a child into a pet store seems to me like the equivalent of involuntary servitude. Chances are you’ll be exiting a store with a new family pet and no matter how much they tell you they’ll take care of it, you’ll be the one dealing with feces and feeding. You better have the fortitude and discipline of a Buddhist monk not to give into that child’s wishes.
The lizards we received were called chameleons, not the Old World variety that change a cornucopia of color, but the New World version that can change from two colors- green and brown. Their true names are Carolina anole lizards commonly found in the United States and in towns like Palmetto, FL. My brother and I just called them chameleons since it was easier and although we were disappointed in their lack of a color palette, to have lizards as pets was pretty exotic and cool in our eyes.
When I went to do a strip of my recollection of this event I could not recall their names. I imagined that we gave them wild names similar to the names G.I. Joe action figures of this era would be named like, Bloodclot and Skidmark. I asked Keith if he remembered and he didn’t, but my eldest sister, Amanda, did. They were named Mike & Ike. I don’t recall which was which, so for the sake of this story I will say mine was named Mike and Keith’s was Ike.
