I had a goldfish once...I won him at a carnival when I was 7, and he lived for 11 years. For a time, he was my only friend. This fish lived in his seldom-cleaned solitary bowl for half my life...once he sucked up a piece of gravel, and I had to operate on him with tweezers. Goldfish are the unsung heroes of the fish world...they're like immigrant workers...you don't know how much you need them until they are gone. As for my goldfish, after 11 years of solitude, I finally decided to buy him a companion, who promptly killed him. Then two weeks later, he died himself, and I was all alone again.