School & Fish

Ethan was accepted into the private school of our choice. Yay! That means, for those keeping score at home, that Ethan passed his testing and Jeff and I passed our parent interview. Before acceptance letters had been mailed out, we met with the administration to review the scores from Ethan's testing. The principal was pleased to report that Ethan scored 99/100 on his assessment (good genes). However, she was concerned about his "deficiency in scissor skills." As evidence of the magnitude of the problem, she showed us a ragged circle that Ethan had cut from construction paper; it looked like it had been fed through a paper shredder, then given to a herd of deranged cats to claw at. Naturally, Jeff and I took immediate action. You will be happy to know that Ethan was grounded for three weeks - no TV, no toys, no after-school friends - just solitary in-room confinement with multiple pairs of safety scissors and 500 sheets of card stock. We have also decided against sports camp this summer in favor of enrollment at an Intensive Scissor Workshop run by one of the leading minds in scissor research at Johns Hopkins, in hopes that we can correct this issue before it gets out of control. Other than that humiliation, the post-mortem test review went very well.

To congratulate Ethan on his school acceptance and as a late birthday present, we took a trip to the pet store to select his first pet, a blue Beta fish. I fully realize that a fish is inarguably the least fun pet ever, but since Ethan is allergic to both dogs and cats and Jeff is anti-anything-in-a-small-cage-that-needs-to-be-cleaned (by him), we did not have a lot of options here. I suggested a special type of hybrid hamster, called - no joke - "a Robo Hamster" - which retails for around $75 and is specifically bred to have a sweet and cuddly disposition. Jeff sagely pointed out that we had just paid a pest control service $500 to "remove" the FREE rodent that had taken up residence in our basement, so.....? Really, I could not argue with that logic. So, fish it is.

Ethan named his fish, ingeniously, "Fishy." Fishy was a fun novelty for about ten minutes. Then came the death questions. I think Ethan is in the throes of some sort of existential crisis because he has initiated multiple discussions during the past month about what happens to things when they die. Ethan was both horrified, yet fascinated, to learn that dead pet fish get flushed down TOILETS! Now, the highlight of his morning is asking if Fishy is going to die today so that we can FLUSH HIM DOWN THE TOILET!? It is a good thing we did not get him a hamster.