Absolutely Guaranteed to Grow?

I got sea monkeys for my office. The idea is for them to be friends with the Chia Pet in the office next door. As lovers of cute animal photos the internet over are already aware, animals get double cute points when they’re nestled up against each other. This also works for zoo animals, unless they’re eating each other. By the rules of logic, then, one can only assume that similar rules apply to fake pets as well.

They arrived in the mail this morning. (Pets by mail! It’s really true: In New York, you can get anything delivered.) As I eagerly stripped open the packaging, I imagined my sea-monkey-filled future, a host of scenarios for our coming life together: me giving my sea monkeys a bath, me taking my seak monkeys to the zoo, me reading graphic novels to my sea monkeys, me trying to puzzle through 330 page GSE reform bills while my sea monkeys (who, because they come complete with a small, green-plastic tank to live in, have no interest in or particular skill in deciphering housing-finance law, though they do have strong, if sadly misinformed, opinions on overfishing). Surely, I thought, the sea monkeys and I have a beautiful future together.

And then I opened the box, read the instructions, and discovered, to my profound shock and horror, that the instructions said I shouldn’t even open the egg pouch for another day, and that I wouldn’t have full fledged sea monkeys to laugh and play with for another week! What kind of cruelty is this? My emptiness, like the depths of the sea from which those monkeys came, seems to know no end.