Is it COVID-related that my fish just started talking to me?

I'm pretty sure my fish started talking to me this week. I was feeding them, wondering how they liked being stuck within the same four walls all the time, and a voice piped up: "Not bad, Papa. We have short memories. And the food is good."

Yes, one of them did call me "Papa."

Such things have been happening to me lately, which is pretty crazy, because when it comes to being "quarantined," I have it about as good as it gets. In fact, strictly speaking, I haven't been quarantined at all. I go to the office, make the runs for our family to the grocery store (much more frequently than I would prefer), ride bikes with my youngest girls, and hike in the woods regularly with my pretty and adventurous wife. Compared to my friends in New York City, most who live in small apartments, and where only one family member is allowed to leave once per day, life in Cape Girardeau is paradise.

Still, strange things keep happening.

Last night I had a dream that my hair had grown way longer than usual. Not quite like Cousin Itt on the "Addams Family." But you get the picture. In the dream I was also making a pitch to some friends from business school who were being supportive, but I could tell they weren't buying the plan. What was the idea? I don't remember, but I was anxious and woke up worried that I'd blown it.

I tried visualizing something more uplifting, such as flying like Superman (or, to be exact, like Dr. Strange, but why Dr. Strange, who knows?) over vistas I saw a few years ago on a vacation in Iceland. That worked for a while. Until the early morning garbage truck emptied the dumpster near my home like it does most mornings at 5 a.m., and my day basically started again.

I've read that a lot of people are having vivid dreams right now. If you're one of them, I sure hope yours are a lot more interesting than mine.

One thing I haven't dreamed about is my fish. And, yes, they are definitely mine, a gift from a "supportive" family. They came when my wife was pregnant with our third child -- and before we knew the baby's sex. (We now have four girls.) My wife asked, "Aren't you sure you don't want a boy?"

I didn't really care at the time. In fact, I was quite happy with having girls. I knew how to handle them (or so I thought). The first two were interesting, they looked cute in little sweaters and bows, they adored my wife and me, they listened intently, and they were always fun. (Oh, how some things can change!) I also kept hearing from other parents, "A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all of her life." That sounded pretty good at the time. Most of all, I just wanted the pregnancy to go smooth and for Victoria and the baby to be healthy. Then, one night at dinner some sort of shrieking spat sparked between the girls and my pregnant wife, and one of the little ones stormed off to throw herself on her bed. My wife calmly turned to me and asked, "Are you certain you wouldn't wish to have a different hormone in the house?"

Soon after, they bought me a new, larger aquarium (to replace the small one that had hosted a school auction betta fish), and they told me all the fish were boys. I have no idea how they knew that. I understand the "anal fin" of some fish is a telltale sign. But how would I know how to interpret the anal fin? And how would they know? Puh-lease, I knew they were just humoring me.

Still, I really enjoy those fish. And the two snails that keep the tank clean. It's my job to regularly change the filter, "vacuum" out part of the water and replace it every few weeks, and feed them each day. Granted, there IS a lot of estrogen in my house, and there's something soothing about watching the fish languidly hover above the crystallized rock and Tiki man, blue lights bouncing off the back of the tank, green and red leaves waving in the flow of the filter, with bubbles climbing quickly in a curtain in the back, and snails, sometimes hidden, sometimes out, weighing down a leaf or slowly crossing the glass. Or, when I drop the food through the opening in the aquarium hood, the flakes floating down from the surface, and fish darting back and forth, miraculously avoiding banging into each other, and eating to their hearts' delight.

I know it probably confuses my kids to see me staring into the water at times. I know it amuses my wife. Sometimes she turns the corner into the kitchen where we keep the tank to find me in deep reverie. "How are your fish," she asks.

They're great, I say. "One of them just called me Papa."

Jon K. Rust is publisher of the Southeast Missourian.