A Small Tragedy

It was suggested, by my dear wife, that we give Lucas something special for his third birthday. The gift of life. No, not a new pancreas. A living thing. A fish, in this case. He loves SeaWorld, and this could be his little own aquatic entertainment park, a park with the added benefit of having in its sole, tiny tank an animal that won't slowly go mad over the course of years spent in captivity.

"A fish", I said, "is a bad idea. What happens if - when - it dies a week later?"

We have a pet, as you know - Mick, our beloved dog, our faithful canine companion, and the centerpiece of our eventual first conversation with the kid about Death. "Well, Lucas, Mick was an old boy, and now he's up in Heaven with the other doggies, barking at the sun and chasing birdies through the clouds...what? Do I believe in Heaven? Er...well...oh, look, the Doodlebops are on!" Not something I'm looking forward to. As George Carlin once said, when you buy a pet, you know it's going to end badly. You've just purchased a small tragedy!

Hopefully, that chat is a ways away. (Barring that, hopefully the Koreans perfect pet cloning, and barring that, hopefully I can find the Pet Sematary. Sometimes dead is not better.) I'm just not ready to talk to a three-year-old about what it means to die. I have this horrific vision of him wandering into the bathroom just as I'm sending Cleo The Goldfish "down the pipe where the pee-pee goes". More to the point, he's eventually going to have someone close to him - a pet, or a person - pass away. I'd prefer that he learns about that later, rather than sooner, because the first time it happens, something inside of you passes away as well.

So Beth agreed  - no fish this year. He's really liking soccer these days, so I suggested a little soccer goal for the backyard. Good game, soccer. Nobody ever got killed playing soccer, right?

Comments

[Holmes]

I've had terrible luck with fish. My first one was for a marine biology class in high school, and it got eaten by some other kid's fish. Then in college, like a dumbass, I kept a mini-aquarium on the same shelf as my stereo. Poor fish got rocked to death. If my son ever needs a fish fix, I'll let him go hang with his uncle, Mr. 300 gallon saltwater aquariums.

[iflyg]

We took our daughter to the aquarium not too long ago, and she LOVED the fish. "Fish!" she cried, over & over - "Red colour! Blue colour! Fish!". Then, at dinner recently, she complemented me on the "chicken". "No, honey, that's fish." I could see the little wheels spinning...

[TwoBusy]

I'm having flashbacks of being in 7th grade, and waking up one day to discover that an air freshener had been knocked into my 10-gallon tank... and that 14 dead fish were now floating listlessly at the top.

[JayMonster]

Technically you are right... nobody ever was killed while playing soccer. And unless you are playing for team Columbia (as you already pointed out), then being a FAN has always been more risky than being an actual player.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

You have hit upon one the most difficult parenting conversations ever.
Birds and bees? Sheesh, it's biology 101.
But death, that's hard.
When my son was three, we came upon a dead opossum on our evening walk. I told him the possum was becoming part of the earth, where it would be used to help other living things grow. I gave myself a B+.
But the next night, the thing was still there. And the night after that, and the night after that. The questions kept coming. I ad-libbed, borrowing my way through all of the Eastern religions plus a little bit of Judaism before I realized: I had no idea what I was doing.
It was Mr. Kamikaze who zeroed in on the real flaw in my parenting. "Did you ever think to take a different route? Duh."

[Lisa]

Well, having had several pocket pets and some suddenly appearing allergies from cats, our 6-year-old is well-seasoned in the ways of life and death.

Our guinea pig, Lucy, went to heaven to be with Jesus (believe it or not). We send her helium balloons whenever we have one available. There are also a few others... Petty the hamster and Ted the chow.. They are all collecting balloons in heaven. :)

I suppose it is our way of saying (because we believe it) that death is not really the end.