or,
How I Bought My Preteen Piranha.

When I was a kid, I had a nerdy fascination for aquarium fish. At some point, there appeared this brief and shady aquarium store in what looked like an old house in need of yard-pruning, and in a neighborhood where it was unlikely to exist. I'm not sure it was really even allowed to be there in the first place. Perhaps that's why it was so short-lived. It was run by some Latino dude with a 70s beard and a tight curly afro, who looked like he might have been a member of Mungo Jerry. Probably not, but that is my slightly fumbling personal frame of reference. A younger Santana also works.

12-year-old Eeyore would ride his Huffy BMX to the store often, never having been able to acquire through begging, the ultimate status symbol of a Mongoose with the mag wheels. But I digress and I'm totally not bitter...

Well, Jerry had all the usual fish, but Jerry was also a risk taker. Or maybe he just had a real passion for fish, one which could never be contained by mere laws. Jerry had a room off to the side of the main fish display area. (Coincidentally, this is how a similarly passionate store-owner connected me to a Sundays & Cybele VHS, but that's already somewhere in the GC archives.)

Anyway, having studied my Axlerod books, I was able to hang with Jerry, talk some aquarium shop, and gain access to the other room.

My goal, of course, was acquiring that beautifully REAL piranha that I had glimpsed previously. Not just a silver with spots fake, but with the green and orange as well. A truly gorgeous and distictive Amazon native.

Jerry was hesitant to sell him to me at my age, so I did what any self-respecting aquatic connoisseur would do. I dragged my mother down there to pay Jerry. I had mow-en a LOT of lawns to buy this legendary carnivorous dude, and I would not be denied.

Anyway, I got him. I mostly fed him frozen brine shrimp. I was not really into the live aquatic bloodshed some other owners seemed to enjoy. Somehow, he nevertheless lived almodt 6 years. I felt he would have lived even longer, had I just given him one live guppy or goldfish as a sacrifice to his innate and instinctual blood-lust. But as an animal lover, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Also, remember Piranha 3-D? That young blonde chick was so freakin gorgeous. So glad she somehow never got absorbed into Hollywood & later spit out as a lost zombie shell of her former bright-eyed self. She could have ended up in a really bad way, hosting Pictionary or something. (I think she still later went for a nose ring anyway, sadly.)

Wait, what was my point?

Oh yeah. I could never decide on a name for my legally questionable fish. My mother deemed him "Mr. P".

Suddenly, I find myself wondering about Vegas odds, regarding Mr. Z vs. Mr. P.

From my strictly amateur political calculations, it's probably Mr. Z who suddenly has a more personal worry, courtesy of Mr. P, now that the entire supportive floor has fallen out from beneath Z.

No outright WW-III worries yet. Not yet. Nyet.