See, it’s not enough that goldfish swim in circles all day in an effort to mesmerize your innocent children then inexplicably die while they watch. No, that would be bad enough. I can trump that with a goldfish who decided to live.

My autistic daughter got an aquarium for her birthday because she loves checking out all the fish whenever we go to the store. She could stand for hours and look at these things, so we thought, “Hey! I know! She’ll love an aquarium of her own!” (IMPORTANT NOTE: the fact that she’s autistic has absolutely nothing to do with goldfish being assholes, and it really has no bearing on this story…it was really just to make you feel really horrible about what our goldfish did to us. Keep reading.)

We set up the aquarium and waited the appropriate amount of time before purchasing fish, giving the water a chance to decrudify before introducing living creatures into it. Then it was time to head to the store. After steering her well away from the $30 fish (Yes, there are fish that cost $30 at the pet store. If I ever pay that much money for a fish, I’d better be eating it paired with a 100-year-old wine, and Hugh Jackman had better be feeding it to me naked.), we found the moderately priced goldfish. I didn’t want to look like a cheapskate and go for the 38-cent fish, since I could feel people staring at me. I just knew they were judging me for being really, really cheap and buying my poor kid the fish equivalent of two-buck chuck. I sprung for three of the dollar fish, and we were outta there.

One of those cheap little suckers has turned on me, though. One of our orange fish has turned mostly black, starting with its fins and tail and now creeping up its body. It’s really a cool-looking mottled color, like a calico cat, but therein lies the problem: my kids have decided I let the fish die of neglect and replaced it with a different fish. Not only that, it really looks like I didn’t even bother trying to get a similar breed of fish, let alone buy an exact replica.

I tried looking up this phenomenon on the internet just to prove my innocence, but there is surprisingly little in the way of scholarly veterinary journal articles on illnesses affecting cheap goldfish. I’m starting to wish I had actually flushed the little crap head down the toilet since I’m being accused of killing him anyway. As it stands, I’m keeping a running tab of goldfish expenditures so I can either take it off my taxes or make sure I don’t reach the threshold where icthysacide becomes a felony.