Fish and Polar Bears

This morning on the way to school, Big Kid began lamenting the death of Dorothy, our goldfish who died quite a while ago. This was particularly disturbing since I had just found Bubbles, the replacement-but-not-quite-as-loved-glofish, belly up a couple of days before (and the kids never even noticed she was gone.)

"You want to get a new goldfish, just like Dorothy?" I asked.

"What about Bubbles?" he asked.

"Well, Bubbles could maybe move somewhere else or just, like maybe she..."

"NO! No, I love Bubbles."

"Okay, maybe we could just get some friends for Bubbles then."

"All right, but I still miss Dorofy."

So I dropped him off at school and went to Wal-mart to get a replacement Bubbles and some friends. One of them didn't even make it home and is in my freezer awaiting return. Bastards.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm going to pull this off, as long as the replacement Bubbles makes it a while. If all goes according to plan, Bubbles will be around (in one form or another) at least another decade.

Speaking of unfortunate deaths, I guess little kid's imaginary work friends all died in an accident with a Polar Bear. "That's really, really sad," I said. "I don't like that, maybe they were just hurt and went to the hospital?"

"Nope, dey are all dead. All my wook fwiends died."

"That's terrible."

"Well, dey made bad toices and den dey died."

"So what happened?"

"Dey got ated by a Polar Bear."

"Wow. That's crazy."

"Yeah, but I wike wookin' alone. So it's okay. I miss my wook fwiends but I do wike wookin' alone."

"Yeah, me too. I know what you mean."

In the past, I've had jobs where I really wouldn't have minded at all if my coworkers were all eaten by Polar Bears. Working alone definitely has its advantages. It just seems odd that he makes up imaginary coworkers who are mean to him, beat him with grill brushes and die grisly deaths.