Yep, that’s how “bowlful” was spelled in the ad.
#Seamonkey care manual#
Then I thumb-tacked the picture on my cork board and started checking the mailbox twice a day for a package that would include sea-monkey eggs, a one-year supply of food, and the “magnificent, fully illustrated manual of sea-monkey care, raising, training and breeding.” My “bowlfull of happiness” couldn’t arrive fast enough. I carefully clipped the yellow coupon and addressed the envelope in my best penmanship. I gave my dad a fistful of sweaty coins, and he wrote a check. I needed a real fish bowl, and I needed a castle for them to live in, which meant a trip to the aquatics department at the local pet store. In addition to the buck twenty-five (plus fifty cents shipping), I had to scrape together enough to buy a fish bowl because no sea-monkey family of mine would live in a mixing bowl previously used to make meatloaf and snickerdoodle cookies. Yes! That’s how I wanted to spend my money! She started, “If that’s how you want to spend your money…,” at which point I promptly stopped listening. And I talked about it to everyone non-stop, until my mama couldn’t take the sustained pleading any longer and in a moment of weakness caved. I mean, who knew what language, but they were clearly evolved enough to communicate. They had mouths, and in the advertisement I was sure I saw bubbles, as if they were actually speaking to each other. A sea-monkey-now that was a family pet ! They were sea-monkeys, for crying out loud, with arms and legs, hands and flippers, fingers and tails. My border collie, Molly, left me sorely wanting the first time I saw an ad for sea-monkeys. The mom had blonde hair in a kicky mermaid bob, lipstick, and a red bow around her three-pronged antennae apparatus. There was a mom, a dad, an older child who was definitely a boy, and a toddler who I assumed was a girl. The detailed illustration showed a family of creatures who lived in a world that anyone could create using a fish bowl from K-Mart. Who here is old enough to remember the ad for sea-monkeys printed in comic books? As the seed catalogs fill the actual mailbox and the emails from our favorite garden companies fill the virtual one, I find myself contemplating truth in advertising.
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