Life, Death, and Outsmarting a 2-Year-Old

Our children's goldfish Dorothy isn't looking too good these days.

She's three years old; she's lived a good long life for an 85¢ fish in a three-gallon tank, but it looks as if the end is near. So I decided to prepare the kids in advance for the inevitable. We've had another goldfish die, but our daughter was much younger then—we merely replaced the goldfish as if nothing had happened, smug in the knowledge that we had outsmarted a two-year-old.

This morning, as my daughter dressed in front of the aquarium, I began to explain that small creatures live shorter lives than big creatures, and Dorothy was very old for a goldfish. We talked about the brief lives of ants and butterflies, and the lengthy lives of elephants, whales, and Galapagos Tortoises. She accepted my forecasting with surprising serenity. I was feeling like Dad-of-the-year as she calmly put two-and-two together and asked, "so if Dorothy is a very old fish, then she might die soon, right?" Momentarily relieved I had gotten my point across, I was unprepared for the next question:

"Then will you switch her with a new fish like you did last time?"