As we all know by now, I was a mess as a kid.

Sometime around 10 or 11, desperate, afraid, and quite alone. I did not have a single friend besides my dog Sam.

I turned to fish to calm my anxiety and panic, which was present almost all the time then. I had no friends, often skipped school, got awful grades, had accidents most days, and hid out in the bushes during gym class and recess.

The gym teacher was delighted. So was the math teacher.

I stole some money, worked for some money, and saved enough to start taking the Main Street bus in Providence to the Newberry store downtown.  I saw a fish tank in a magazine and knew I had to have one. I cannot to this day tell you why.

I was on that bus back and forth into Providence for much of my life. No one ever asked me where I was going or what I was doing.

There was a one-armed man there; he ran Newberry’s fish department.  I forget his name. He lost an arm in World War II and ran the Newberry tropical fish department.

That’s all I knew about him except that he was bald and had white hair. He was very nice to me. He never asked me what I was doing there and gladly gave me lessons about having tropical fish.

I’m not sure how I did it, but I hauled four or five tanks with heaters and filters and pumps and gravel, and fish on the bus in about 100 trips and set up a little fish empire in my bedroom. I do remember people staring at me on the bus. I learned on the bus – it helped me when I became a reporter – that if you looked like you belong there, people would leave you alone.

My parents never said a word about the fish; I don’t know why.

They avoided subjects that puzzled them, and I puzzled them for sure. I think they had no idea what to do with me.

My father thought I had gone mad, and I slowly became a fish geek. The poor man, all he wanted was for me to become an athlete, and he got stuck with an odd and terrified little nerd.

After a while,  I turned inward with the fish. They were very important to me. They were the focal point of my life for four or five years.

I started breeding Beta (those fighting fish they sell in small bowls) and Mollies and selling the babies to the one-armed man. I never did know his name, but we became pals. He always gave me fish magazines and slipped some extra fish in my fish bag when I bought some new ones.

I learned a lot from him. His were lessons I could grasp.

I learned to operate on my fish when they had cancer and cross-breed different kinds of fish. I was up all night making sure the babies came out and were not eaten by their parents.

The fish fascinated me, I was King of my empire, and they did calm me and eased my panic. It was my little world.

No one but my parents (walking by my bedroom) and I ever saw those tanks. There isn’t a single photograph of them or me as a child.

After five years of learning and expansion, the heating unit short-circuited in my central tank (they were all connected to one another then) and exploded, blowing the sides out of all the other tanks.  Fish were flopping all over the upstairs floors. Water poured down the dining room chandelier and onto my mother’s new table and carpeting.

Sam rushed upstairs, and when I got there, he was devouring the last fish, flopping around all over the upstairs. This broke my heart, and I gave up fish for over 50 years. Let’s face it; I remember thinking, it’s time to move on. The fates had spoken.

When I got together with Maria, I was coming out of a nervous breakdown, and she had her own anxiety issues. I thought it might be fun and calming to get a fish tank again. She agreed.

I’m no longer deeply into fish, but we both like having a tank. It is soothing; it has been fun watching the fish (she loves snails especially); I sometimes feel the Ghost of that Fish Geek and shiver with gratitude that I am not young anymore. But somehow, I retained his knowledge, never imagining I could ever need it.

Two weeks ago, our tank was infected with some bacteria  gook, which turned the water into a thick black cloud and killed half of our fish. All that information I had stored in my head came back to me; I knew what to do, cleaned up the tank, saved most of the fish, got rid of the natural plants, and bought some colorful artificial ones.

This afternoon, we went to Petco in Bennington, Vt., and got some small fish, some snails, algae eaters, and grande baby shrimp. I felt that old excitement of getting a new tank and setting it up. And I didn’t have to take a bus.

I know exactly which ones to get and how they would fit into my tank. I live with an artist, and she and I are cooking up ways to make the take-look gun and be good for the fish. We’re using rocks, broken jars, and some colorful artificial plants.

I put the new fish in water bags so they could acclimate into the tank and then let them in. We had a fun half-hour watching the snails and shrimp and fish swim around and figure things out. The tank looks great.

We’ll leave the tank alone for a while and put some older water in every day. It all came back to me. And it’s fun, mostly. My memories of those years give me the chills, to be honest. But I’m glad we have a fish tank so clean and healthy.

And you know what?

It still helps to calm me down. It makes me feel that I am in control of at least one thing in my life. And at least for now.