Now you understand. Chinchillas are fucking awesome, and I wanted one. But my parents, likely sensing that my demands were movable provided their counteroffer had fur, were able to bargain me down to a hamster - a species so stupid it forgot to finish growing a tail. Obviously I didn't force the chinchilla issue enough. I was like an amateurish bank-robber who threatens to kill all the hostages if he doesn't get a chopper, and my parents were like veteran negotiators who in twenty minutes bargain the guy down to a roast beef sandwich and the guarantee that his prison cell toilet will have a seat on it.
So I got a Twinkie-colored hamster and creatively named it Twinks. Years later I took a class called "Social Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity" and learned that "twink" is a slang term for a young gay man. Urban Dictionary informs me that "(t)he stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent." Twinks the hamster was also young and blonde, but was female, hairy in the manner of a hamster, and not fond of club wear any time before 5 PM. I can't really speak to her intelligence relative to other hamsters, but she was smart enough to escape one time for like 5 days. Assuming that she was halfway to Honduras or halfway through our cat's digestive system, I was crestfallen, and my parents after a few days caved and got me a new hamster. This one was a poop-colored male that I, being very smart, decided to call Whiskers. Whiskers was notable for having the biggest balls-to-torso size ratio I have ever seen in nature to this day. You might say that this is just a case of childhood imagination-run-wild a la The Beast in The Sandlot, but I don't think so. I swear, man. It was like if you put monster truck tires on a motorcycle.
But at any rate, Whiskers' reign as the only hamster in town was short-lived, as I found Twinks a few days later wandering around in the basement. I excitedly picked her up, and she in turn excitedly bit right through my thumbnail. Not to be outdone, I responded by throwing her across the room and running away crying. But we were both fine. My parents were less-than-thrilled, though, as the amount of hamster cages, hamster food, and hamster litter to be changed out had just doubled.
Things settled down in the aftermath. After a week or two of hamster overload, I fell back into my regular routine of forgetting that I had any pets and relying on my parents to keep them alive. But on one particularly boring night, my brother and I decided to see what would happen if we put Twinks and Whiskers together. The answer, in hindsight, was predictable: if you put hamsters together, they have passionate hamster sex. That's it. Whiskers didn't have to ask Twinks if she saved some turkey for him, and he didn't have to roll up in a luxury hybrid hamster ball. They went from meeting to penetration faster than a mosquito on your arm. We separated them after like 30 seconds of laughing like nerds, but for Whiskers that was more than enough time to piss my parents off again a month later when a bunch of horrifically ugly, hairless hamster babies turned up in the corner of Twinks' cage. I was pumped. Conservative groups lauded Twinks' decision to choose life. Whiskers claimed he was not the father. But Twinks was like "Look at those babies! They look just like you! They look just like you!" and everyone in the crowd agreed.
So anyway, that's the riveting story of how 13 years ago some kids in my neighborhood got some free hamsters. I don't know how to sum this up except to say that this would never have happened if I'd gotten a chinchilla. First of all, Chinchillas don't escape. And they definitely don't have sex. Look at that picture again. No way they have genitals. Chinchillas just pop into existence whenever a unicorn sneezes.
