Hope floats

fish adoption, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

What do you get when you go to a kids' fun fair?

If you're in our family you DO NOT get a fish.

This is because in OUR family physical coordination was washed out of our gene pool and replaced by an inability to understand the simple rules of play. (I'm talking about me not Ittybit).

After Ittybit hurled the hollow plastic golf balls at the tiny bowls of colored water (getting three stuck between the rims ... so close to winning territory and still so far) the nice man handed her a pink ticket, saying that if she got five more (losing) tickets she could get a fish. Because I thought any losing ticket would do, and there had a whole gymnasium filled with games that we could flub, we ventured off to various games.

Long after I was ready to leave the fair, we took our losing (and some winning) tickets back to the fish-claiming window of the game booth and were told we were out of luck. We needed to lose at the fish game to get a fish.

So ... off to the pet store, where we adopted Marigold and Poppy, who were then renamed Emily and Abby, and four minutes after that renamed Emily and Elias (because she wants them to have baby fish) and possibly renamed Burp and Rock today, I don't know ....

Anyhow. She's all about being a good mommy to her new pets. She was careful transporting them home. Held the plastic bag in both hands, careful not to shake the bag. She showed them her room and turned on the bedside lamp so they wouldn't be afraid in the dark.

She never even flinched after I offered her Goldfish when she wanted a snack, realizing the horror of the thought after the word escaped my mouth. She just looked at me narrow-eyed as I giggled like an eight-year-old at my own joke. "Not THESE goldfish, though."

She so much more mature. She wanted to give her new charges just the right toy to make them happy when she's away. We had to test a bunch to make sure they didn't float.

It felt a little like the David Letterman show for a while there. We dunked a Matchbox car to predictable results, as well as a plastic key to her prized cash register toy with a not-so-predictable outcome. It sank like a stone. Neither the egg rattle nor the pigs decended past the water line.

Oddly enough, the Playmobil yellow-jacketed girl sunk to the bottom on two submersions, but floated on the third submersion like her SCUBA and vested compatriots. I was really trying to make it work, though, because I thought it would be cool for the girl toy to swim with the fish.

"It would be like YOU pretending to swim with your fish," I said, all excited like.

"Naw," she said. "I don't think I would like to get my face wet. Let's go with the key."