R.I.P Sheldon

Remember the fish your dad bought me for Valentine’s Day, Dr. Sheldon Cooper? The one he bought with the hopes of quelling my baby hunger for the time being? Well, I accidentally killed him this weekend.

As luck would have it, when they say you can’t put a Betta fish in untreated tap water, they are actually being serious. I realized we were out of water cleaning solution when I went to clean his bowl on Saturday, but figured that it was probably all just a big scam anyway and filled the bowl up with our faucet water. Within six hours we discovered Sheldon lying on his side at the bottom of the bowl, as dead as dead could be.

Aside from the troubling implications that the tap water I drink on a daily basis apparently contains enough chemicals to instantly kill a relatively complex organism, my ability to care for a real life baby also came under scrutiny this weekend.

As your mother I am charged with the duty of, among other things, keeping you alive. In fact, keeping you alive is pretty much the most important thing I have to do to stay out trouble with the law. If I am not even capable of keeping a fish alive for longer than six months though, how am I supposed to keep an entire child alive for the rest of my life? Your father wants this question answered in its entirety and to his satisfaction before he proceeds any further down this baby-making road.

And frankly I don’t know how to reassure him that I’ll be a good steward over you. That might all be up to him. The truth is I am prone to lapses in judgment (please mark Sheldon as Exhibit A). I tend to forget things. I struggle with monotony and thus sometimes overlook important details. I have poor eyesight. Sometimes I impulsively decide not to do any of the things I set out to do that day. I like to lay down a lot.

None of these attributes will bode well for you as a child of mine. Fortunately your dad tends to make up for a lot of these shortcomings, but in the end he can’t be around 100% of the time to make sure I don’t inadvertently do something drastic. Like look how easy it was for me to kill Sheldon—and your father was just in the next room!   

My point is that while you won’t be as fragile as a fish, you’ll still be vulnerable and entirely dependent upon me to protect you. That probably makes you as nervous as it makes me. I guess in the end what I’ll tell myself is that you’ll be okay, especially considering kids in Africa bathe with goats and they seem to be just fine. I promise to do my best to be viligent over you at all times, without being unnecessarily overprotective. I’ll try and find that balance between you being free to explore your life within clearly established boundaries and outright negligence. It may take some practice though, on both of our parts.