A Fish named Dorothy

When Joshua was 4 he began to beg for another pet.(We already had a cat named Griffen- but that's a different blog.) Let's see. It had to be small, cheap and easy to take care of. How about a WalMart goldfish? We found the bait of our dreams. Joshua named it Dorothy after Elmo's fish. For reasons known only to my son, Dorothy was a boy. He was a great fish...relatively clean, not too loud, and very forgiving when we forgot to feed him. Dorothy lived for 18 months at our house!! Not bad for a goldfish I am told. We watched him have one near death experience after another and just when we thought Dorothy had succumbed, he rallied. He hung on for the love of a boy named Josh. (I tend to overdramatize things a tad.)When Dorothy finally did die we covered his bowl and waited for Daddy to come home and have the traditional prayer and flushing ceremony. I thought Joshua would be pretty sad to lose such a good friend. We flushed and Josh said, "NOW, can we get a dog??!!"