When I was eight, I had a fish called Arnold. Large goldfish, googly eyes – you might have seen him around. He lived in his sweet fishbowl with another fish by the name of Willis. We pimped their crib as much as we could with a lil fishy house and some fake fishy plants and one of those fluorescent waterwheels.

Arnold was the hottest and coolest fish I had ever seen. If he was human, he would have a carefully curated moustache and be into old-school Detroit techno. Perhaps he might get a little deep from time to time and write earnest poetry – but that wouldn’t have bothered me because I loved Arnold. I understood Arnold. And I’m pretty sure that he loved me back.

Arnold was my first love.

Goldfish, just like humans, die.Credit: Kylie Pickett

I don’t need to prepare you for what happened next because you know how these things go. One day Arnold is my best friend, and the next Arnold is dead, puffed up and floating at the top of the bowl with his eyes bulging even further outside his head. Did I feed him too much? Love him too hard so that his little fishy body couldn’t take it?

My parents didn’t try to hide the fact that Arnold had died. It was the ’80s and theories of parenting were to cause as much physical and psychological scarring as possible to get us ready for the real world.

Arnold was dead and there was no one to pick up my eight-year-old existential self and assure me it was all going to be OK. I did my own equations. Fish died. Fish are kind of like people so, vis a vis, people die. This was the beginning of realising the fruitlessness of existence. It was the beginning of understanding that life was just an endless stream of disappointment and death.

When I buried Arnold in the backyard and officiated his funeral service, I was ahead of the curve: memorial – tick. I invited my family, but no one turned up. It was the ’80s so no one really cared. I vowed that I would one day protect my own children from suffering the pain of dead animals and they would never themselves EVER be allowed to have one.

But unfortunately, a plucky little guy came to live in our home as our fifth family member – mainly as a friend to our littlest child who eventually named his fishy friend Henry.