As most children do, I grew up loving animals. I wanted pets upon pets, especially because one of my childhood best friends had a farm. She got to have cows, horses, and plenty of farm dogs. I, on the other hand, got the leftover pet store animals that generally died quicker than what they were worth. That being said, my family grew close to a few of these pets; but for the most part, looking back on all of my strange childhood pets makes me want to apologize to my parents for the pets I begged them for.

1. Dog

I put my dog Stuart as #1 on my list because he is by far my favorite childhood pet. Also I wanted to show you how cute he is. He's 12 and I miss him all the time when I'm away.

2. Fish

Marshall, my childhood fish, was the chillest pet around. He swam around the same fish bowl for nine years. Yep, nine. He never once threw a fit, except for when I accidentally put too-cold water in his bowl after cleaning it and shocked him. But like the trooper he was, Marshall swam back to life after I fixed the water temperature.

3. Frogs

In seventh grade, I somehow convinced my mom to buy my sister and I aquatic frogs from a store at the mall. My master plan worked because I told my mom I would be able to use them in my reptile project for school. As we were walking out of the mall, it suddenly dawned on both of us that frogs aren't reptiles. Cynthia: 1, Mother: 0. By the way, one of them is still alive today.

4. Gerbil

In sixth grade, we did a science experiment with gerbils. It's not like we tested products on them; we put them in a maze to see which one would get to the cheese fastest or something like that. Long story short, my teacher needed students to take the gerbils after our experiment. I convinced my parents by writing a letter as the gerbil saying it needed a new home. I think they let me keep her because I wanted to name her Cupcake.

5. Ant farm

For my birthday one year, a friend gifted me an ant farm. The farm was made of a funky green gel. Inside of the box was an envelope that I had to send in to the company to get the actual ants. A few days later, I received a tube of ants in the mail. They were dumped into the green gel and made really cool paths and tunnels. It was really sad watching them die because I could see all the dead ants in the gel. RIP ants.

6. Hamster

Hamsters and gerbils are very similar but hamsters are fluffier and don't have long tails. Hamster cages smell really, really bad and our hamster Zippy had a history of escaping his cage and wandering during the night. He also peed a lot when held.

7. Bearded dragon

I never had a bearded dragon but a friend in my neighborhood had one. No one could touch it because it had spikes. Seems like an awful pet to have.

8. Hermit crabs

Junie B. and Sheldon the hermit crabs were bought at the same store in the mall that our frogs were. See a theme here? Hermit crabs were the worst pet I had as a child because they bite. Also, they omit the smell of rotting fish.