This was a scholarship I wrote that is dripping with sarcasm because I'm pretty much done writing scholarship essays.
Guinevere the fish was one of the most loyal friends a child could have. He was a fine upstanding (well, up swimming) aquatic who would swim to the side of his two liter bowl at the very sound (or vibration) of my voice. It is for this reason that April twenty-eighth will always be a day that lives in infamy for me. It was the day when I strolled up to my bedroom to find Guinevere belly-up.
I won Guinevere at a family fair two months prior. At the time, I did not know the difference between male and female fish, or else he probably would have been Lancelot. But while my ability to chuck small ping-pong balls into fishbowls was something to rejoice over, I was concerned about the safety of my catch, even at the tender age of ten. Instead of politely picking up the particularly diminutive, dingy fishbowl and handing my prize to me, the fair attendant dumped Guinevere into a plastic bag with some questionable liquid I assumed to be water in it.
Without further ado, I carried on with my fair activities, now ecstatic with my prize. You see, Guinevere was my first pet, as my mother is not a fan of animals. I do not come from a particularly animal activist family. We are all omnivores and there is nothing that suggests an adoration of anything canine or feline in our home, although we do have a poorly made birdhouse in the backyard.
That evening, poor Guinevere went on every ride imaginable with me. As my poor Beta was flung in every direction in his tiny plastic prison, he probably experienced more trauma than most fish ever have to live through. Luckily, Gwen survived the experience and was promptly placed in a more spacious (and cleaner) aquatic home.
I am pretty sure Guinevere was never what you would consider healthy, even before his fair fare with me. He did not seem particularly well fed. He was susceptible to all kinds of disease from the cool air surrounding the festival, not to mention from the West Islip tap water he was given, which is proven to cause breast cancer (and who knows what in fish.) Although I did everything in my fifth grade capacity to protect and serve my finned friend, I do not believe he was ever at peace in my home. I tried to make his two months in my room the cleanest and happiest time of his life.
This tragic tale brings us to the real problem at hand- the blatant mistreatment of fish as rewards at carnivals and fairs. A living animal should never be given away as a prize. It objectifies and takes all the dignity away from the animal in question. Fish are not an animal that people normally consider noble. Sure, they are in sushi and koi ponds, but they are not cuddly and thus do not matter.
I am of the opposing opinion. I think that until fish are treated with the nobility and respect they deserve as living creatures and fundamental members of the aquatic environment, a great injustice is being done to several hundreds of species. The way fish are treated at fairs is beyond inhumane; it is reprehensible and amoral.
I believe it was Dr. Seuss who once wrote “A person’s a person no matter how small.”(Seuss 8.) Why should this not extend to the rest of the animal kingdom? Just because humans claim dominion over the food chain does not mean that they are worth more in the scheme of things. I move that the practice of awarding fish at carnivals be abolished. It may be a small problem, but a small solution could be the beginning of major change in the world. Perhaps it is best to look at the fish as a symbol for the oppressed. When they are free and allowed to fulfill their duties to society, the world will inevitably be a more harmonious and better place to live.
