Once Upon A Time....

For Jessica's 5th birthday, I bought her her very first pet. It was a goldfish. Jessica, with the help of an idea from her Jewish Aunt Jen, dubbed it Goldielox.

Goldie was a good fish. It swam and swished when the water was clean. But, when the water would start getting cloudy, Goldie would slow down and look lethargic. That was the signal for me to clean out the fishbowl.

Well, there was a time when the bowl became a little cloudier than usual. But, I put off cleaning it out. I figured, what's one more day? Those one more days turned into many, many more days. It got to the point where you couldn't even see Goldie unless she was butt up against the side of the bowl. And then she'd completely disappear into a cloud of muck and fish dookie.

One fateful morning, when I went to feed her, I saw her belly up. This would've been a good time to teach the children about the circle of life, but I thought I had cheated them by not cleaning out the bowl when I should've.

Plus, Jake and Bren were begging me to buy them a fish too, and if they knew Goldie was dead, they'd take it as the perfect opportunity to grind me into submission to buy them a fish along with the one I would've bought Jessica to replace Goldie.

So, I decided I wouldn't tell them about Goldie.

I took the fish out of the bowl and flushed it down the toilet. The kids wouldn't have known the fish was gone because remember how cloudy the fishbowl was?

I snuck out of the house and went to the pet store.

The clerk picked out a fish and put it in a bag of water.

I should've paid more attention because when I got home, to my horror, I noticed the fish was totally different. Same species, but different coloring and different size.

No matter. The kids rarely took notice of Goldie anyway, so they wouldn't notice the difference.

I had the fish in a measuring cup full of water while I cleaned out the bowl. It was my usual M.O. to do that.

Brendon came into the kitchen sniffing for food, and noticed what I was doing. He approached the measuring cup and did a double take.

"Why does Goldie look different?"

Snagged! Shit!

"Uh, what do you mean? Goldie doesn't look any different."

"Yeah, she used to be all orange, now she's yellow underneath."

"Yeah, uh, sometimes fish change color. Like in the summer when your hair gets a little lighter."

PLEASE fall for that and stop scrutinizing!!

Brendon shrugged his shoulders and moved on.

Jessica bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter to observe what I was doing. By then "Goldie" was in her fishbowl swimming happily around.

I could see out of the corner of my eye that Jessica was staring intently at "Goldie". My heart sank. She knew.

"Mom."

"Yes, Jessica." Remain silent until confronted.

"Why does Goldie look like a baby? She's so tiny."

Time to lie.

"It's an optical illusion. Sometimes when you see things under water, they look smaller than they really are."

"Oh. She looks so cute."

"Yeah, she is really cute."

Jessica hopped off the counter and bounded into the family room to watch a cartoon while I prepared breakfast.

Whew!