It was early March of 1977, and my sister was waiting patiently for her Sea Monkeys to hatch.
She had ordered them through an ad ripped from the back page of one of my comic books.
Every morning she hoped that the tiny creatures would finally make their appearance.
I periodically peeked into the container myself, but all I saw were air bubbles on the top and some strange milky stuff on the bottom…
No signs of Sea Monkeys.
I had imagined they would look just like the pictures in my comic book with goldfish-sized males and females resembling mermaids.
Not only was I expecting them to materialize, but I supposed they could be trained to do tricks like my dog Mutt, as described in the ad.
I even wondered if we could get them to talk, because that would have been really cool.
But each morning after I finished my oatmeal and rinsed my dish, I took a peek into the oval beaker where they were supposed to hatch.
All I found was that there was not a whole lot going on there.
I had thoughts that we could train a few, then set them free in Limekiln Lake where they could show me where the fish were.
I had visions of saddling one and traveling on its back to my favorite places on the lake.
However, all I could do was blankly stare into the plastic incubator before going outside to explore.
Mutt and I were building a long toboggan flume that stretched for more than a half-mile behind our house up Seventh Lake Mountain.
Every day we lengthened the track and made several runs on it. Our speeds increased daily as the track became more defined and hardened with the low nighttime temperatures.
The trees we winded around seemed to be getting closer to the track and harder to maneuver.
And though safety was always an afterthought when we engaged in these sorts of activities, we eventually had to suspend our sliding when I broke the front of the wooden toboggan in three places.
All we could do was wait for spring to arrive, so we could train our Sea Monkeys to take us on a good ride.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com