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?

I'm sure you're all as frantic as I am about what to do about the safety of our families in light of 
Raised an Independent Fundamental Baptist, the kind of folks who think Southern Baptists are too liberal, you better believe Christmas was all about Jesus. Before opening our gifts, we read the story of Jesus' birth and prayed to God as we thanked him for the ultimate gift - giving up his son to the Italians, I mean, Romans, so we wouldn't have to burn for eternity in the lake of fire and brimstone that was Satan's crib - Hell. We even did birthday cakes for Jesus. (Strangely enough, I often wondered why we'd blow out the candles on his behalf, with him being omnipotent and omnipresent and all.) Yes, "Santa" came, but there was always a wink and a smile from Mom and Dad that left suspicions in the back of my mind that perhaps it wasn't Santa after all. I think I was able to put two and two together the one year that Santa gave me a Bible.
Often times, when I am presented with a vexing problem, a moral conundrum, or a difficult choice, I ask myself a simple question.
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