The curse of winning

The carnival is a dangerous place to bring a young child, and it's even worse for parents.

I used to think that not winning a little stuffed piece of cotton was the worst thing that could happen to a child.  I’ve learned a lesson: winning is even worse.

My child dragged me through the carnival over the weekend, and she won a little pink bear.  It was pretty impressive, and I was beaming with pride at my daughter's immense skill.  Then she pointed at another game that involved throwing ping-pong balls into water.  I knew she could do this.

She couldn't.  After two dollars and ten throws, there was no hope.  But then, the nice man at the booth gave my daughter one more throw and he made sure that it landed in water.  Winner!  Next thing I knew, I was being handed a goldfish in a plastic bag.  Not a cracker; it was the living, breathing aquarium-filler.

Seeing the concerned look on my face, the game-master quickly offered to sell me a fish tank with two fish for five dollars.  As my daughter stood looking at her fish, I quickly realized that the fish would be coming home with us either way.  Five more dollars gone.

The wife was not pleased when I walked back with the fish tank.  Who could blame her?  She asked what the fish were going to eat.  I walked back to the fish-con-man-booth and after another dollar, I had fish food.  And another problem.

I was up all night worried about fish care.  My only experience with fish involves a barbeque.  Plus the fish were going to inevitably die, and I did not want to have that talk with my daughter.

Ideas floated through my head of what to do.  Maybe the fish could just disappear.  But there's a fish tank at daycare, and she loves eating goldfish crackers.  There were too many things that would remind her that there's supposed to be a fish in the house.  Finally, I came up with the plan.

The next morning, I told my daughter that Mommy would be taking the fish back to be with their families and friends at the carnival.  I had a whole line of lies lined up with references to Finding Nemo and The Little Mermaid, but she went along with the idea.  Part one of the plan went off without a hitch.

As my wife left that morning, we made a big deal of saying good-bye to the fish, and I pretended to bring the fish out to the car.  Instead, I ran to the bathroom and flushed the little guys back to the ocean.  Part two: check.

The only anxious moment was a couple of hours later when my daughter asked to go pee-pee-potty.  I was deathly afraid that I'd open the toilet lid and see two goldfish smiling up at me, but the bowl was clean, and I had gotten away with it.

Not my best fathering moment, but the problem had been put out to sea.

This previously appeared in Parenting on the Peninsula