Dear Sweet, Lovely, Kind Facebook Friends,

Please stop sending me virtual fish. Also virtual pigs, frogs, goats, puppies, bunnies and cherry trees. I cannot handle them.

I'm a bad virtual mommy.

Facebook is a slow site for me. On the rare occasions when I make myself visit it, I can play three to five games of Free Cell while waiting for each page to load. If I go to the imaginary aquarium? Seven games, minimum. I'm not patient enough to even *go* to Facebook very often, and when I do the guilt almost overwhelms me.

I haven't fed those poor damned fish for months now!

Years ago I had a Tamaguchi. It was a pterodactyl. It took 24 hours to hatch from its egg and then, with the absolute best care you could give it, it lived for exactly seven days. I slept with it beside my bed. For a week at a time I would wake up every two hours all night to feed and care for my pterodactyl. I snuck it into work with me. I cried when it died.

I am not the sort of person that wise people give virtual animals to. I don't even have real fish because I don't have time to take care of them. And I wouldn't even have to sit around and play computer solitaire while I waited on *real fish*! They'd be right here all the time (most likely floating belly up while I wondered why the water was cloudy and what was that smell coming from the aereator).

Seriously! I'm having nightmares about those starving virtual fish. I've thought and I've thought and I've thought about what to do. I considered looking for a virtual cat, but then I felt really bad. It's not enough that I'm starving the poor things, but now I'm planning out and out fishicide? Then I thought maybe I could make a 25-mile round trip to the library on a regular basis and use their broadband connection to feed my fish, but that seemed a little extravagan. Hire someone to care for my virtual menagerie? Only if they're willing to work for virtual money! Ask a friend to care for them? Never live THAT down. So finally I came to the conclusion that my only real option is to ask for mercy.

MERCY?!?