gold 2

christy was spot on. on that fateful day following the death of gold, i headed to walmart and picked up gold 2. i did my very best to find a fish that looked exactly like the original gold because my son has a surprisingly keen eye for details. for example, i can show him pictures of fifty different trains from thomas the train, and though i myself don't know who they are (nor can i see much difference between them), he is able to tell me the names of every single one. even when the pictures are black and white. also, this is the same child who tells his parents that bun bun is missing when we accidentally leave bun bun outside. if it had been left to us adults, bun bun would likely still be outside -- or in the belly of a dog. and this is also the same child who is capable of giving me directions home from his parents day out at age two!! that's right. he'll sit in the back seat and i'll ask him when i should turn, and he'll say, "turn right" or "turn left" at the appropriate times. sometimes i'll give him a false question and ask if we should turn knowing we shouldn't, and he'll calmly respond, "go straight daddy." at age 2!

all this to say, i needed a good imitation, fool's gold if you will. well, i ended up getting a pretty darn good imitation gold. i brought it home. i put it in the tank. ezra was happy. i was happy.

until about three hours later when i walked into the kitchen and there was gold 2, belly up. i couldn't believe it. what were we going to do? ezra was still awake and would be for an hour or two. so we did what any good parents would do. we left the dead fish floating in the fish tank. when ezra asked about him, we simply told ezra that gold was sleeping.

don't judge me.

so here is an interesting fact. walmart has 90-day return policies on fish. if you bring your receipt and the dead fish, they will reimburse you with the money you paid. so that is what we did. kendel went back to walmart with gold 2 in a ziplock baggie, walked up to the return counter and traded in gold 2 for gold 3. ezra was actually present while kendel was buying the new fish. she simply told him that we were taking gold to walmart because he needed medicine.

don't judge her.

so far gold 3 has lasted about 18 hours. he doesn't look quite like gold 2 and certainly not like gold. its kind of like making a copy of a copy. nevertheless, ezra is as happy as he can be with gold 3, though if he asks, we just call him gold.