For the last several days, my lymph nodes have been making an escape attempt through the sides of my neck. The pain is generally little more than irritating, but the accompanying fatigue concerns me a bit, especially since my daily duties involves several hours of keeping a hyperactive toddler from doing harm to himself and others. So I must admit to not being in the greatest mood of late.
This is perhaps part of why when Nico bounded up to the door proudly waving around one of his sand toys that cradled the corpse of a dead goldfish, I may have shrieked and jumped a little more than necessary. Well, that and we don’t even have a goldfish.
Or rather, we didn’t have a goldfish until we left the house this morning.
One of the troubles with living as a foreigner in China is people like to give your child things. Especially if your child is Nico. This has become a particular headache in the past two weeks when I began the “culling” phase of our move and Nico proceeded onto the “let’s collect goldfish” phase.
The first two fish Nico acquired were from one of the compound fountains. Apparently, it had to be cleaned out and Nico being cute and charming and in adoration of all things “fish” managed to weasle the apartment managers out of a pair of goldfish. I dealt with the situation by convincing him the goldfish would be happier in a different fountain.
The second pair of fish were a gift from Ayi and her husband when they greeted Nico with what I like to call a “fish death ball” as we dropped him off for an overnight at their place. Basically, this contraption is a little ball on a key ring that some enterprising person fills with water, gravel, and fish. These are then given to children who run around with them as children will, shaking them all up until I presume the fish die. Nico’s guppies survived the night and so I rewarded them with a transfer into a proper fish bowl for the time being.
Today, however, somehow brought yet another pair of goldfish. I’m not too sure how Nico acquired them as I was busy being horrified by the story of how he had killed the dead one (the second one remains alive for the time being and is hanging out with the guppies). Apparently the fish-killer reached into the bowl and squeezed it to death. Ayi related this story to me with the same mildly giddy excitement that she tells me about all of Nico’s morning escapades, leading me to believe that she didn’t find the goldfish corpse nearly as traumatizing as I did. Indeed as far as I can tell, after Nico killed the fish, she proceeded to fish it out of the bowl and placed it in the sand toy which Nico was gleefully carting around when he greeted me at the door at noon.
As the last murder Nico committed involved impaling a fly on the edge of a coin, I wasn’t sure what to do with the remains of the present kill. Both Gaudi and 狐猴 the cat were tossing carnal glances at the body, but I just couldn’t handle the prospect of little golden fish guts around the apartment. So I opted for the preferred fish burial of my youth.
“Come, Nico. We need to bury the fish,” I said as I picked up the body and walked off to the bathroom, Nico trailing along, insistently pointing back at the fish bowl where presumably he thought the fish would begin swimming once again if I just dropped it in.
“No, no, Nico. The fish is dead. We need to let it go.” And let it go I did. As its body glided down the toilet, Nico finally realized the seriousness of the situation.
You see, things that go down the toilet never come back up.
Three hours later, the boy was still tearfully pointing at the bathroom calling out, “Fish! Fish!”
And if I never get him potty-trained, this will be why.