My son has a fish whose name is Bob. Bob is a Betta that lives by himself in a small round fishbowl. A family friend of ours gave my son this fish during one of his visits last year. My son was told that the rules for Bob were as follows:

• Mom and dad have to help feed Bob.
• Don't give Bob too much food because a hungry fish is a happy fish.

Every week my 3 ½ year old son and I change the water in Bob's bowl. Normally we use a small colander in which to catch Bob as we dump the old water down the sink and clean the fishbowl. Last night was a little different. The colander was dirty from the night before and sitting in the dishwasher, so I decided to use a spaghetti server instead. As I was pouring the water from Bob's bowl, Bob panicked and leapt from the bowl directly into the garbage disposal. There is a giant spider that lives in our garbage disposal (or so my son is convinced), so my son was horrified to watch as Bob sink the black depths of the sink drain to take on this imaginary spider as Beowulf did with Grendel.

"Fuck!," I said (something I should probably not say around my son, but the only thing that came to mind). I quickly removed everything from the sink, and turned on the sink light so that I could hopefully see the fish before sticking my hand in the garbage disposal (which was full of God knows what...and a fish). I had to get Bob out of there or deal with a screaming and very angry 3 ½ year old whose grandmother an hour before had loaded up with sugar. I looked down and made out a fish shape, then looked back at my son, who at this point had a pouty lip, tears welling up and had dropped both of his shoulders in disappointment.

I looked again to see if Bob had moved, but he hadn't. There he was, gazing at me with his one upturned eye and gills flapping against a partially eaten piece of something. There were bits of other things, but they were just as ambiguous as what Bob was breathing. I suspected that, despite my efforts, Bob was going to be dead before it was all over. My son, now crying, wants to watch me rescue Bob, but there isn't time to save the fish AND put the baby on the counter, so I ignored him and worked my hand into the garbage disposal.

Never in my life would I stick my hand in a garbage disposal--too many movies show bad things happening to hands in one of those things for me to be comfortable doing it in real life. After a few minutes and quite a bit of squeezing, cramming, running the water (so Bob could breathe), and jabbing my hand into the hole, I can finally feel Bob's slimy body. The new challenge was to get Bob to flip into the tiny cup I made with my fingers. Since I wasn't sure that Bob was even still alive, I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this...so I just hoped Bob was alive.

Fortunately, he was very alive, and within 5 minutes he managed to flop into my hand so I could pull him out. I put Bob into the container we keep him in when we clean his bowl. Bob looked okay, and my son had calmed down. I dropped a few bits of fish food into his container as a reward for not being dead.

An hour or so passes, and my son tells me that Bob learned to swim upside down. Great, now I get to have the "Where do we go when we die?" talk with a 3 ½ year old sad little boy. I sat my son down and asked him if he knew why Bob was upside down. Being only 3 1/2 , my son had no idea, but strongly suspected that Bob had been poked a bunch of times by the spider in our garbage disposal. I went with that, and simply agreed that a spider had poked Bob too many times for Bob to be happy and that by swimming upside down, Bob was asking if we would be nice enough let him live with God.

I explained that, since fish can't talk like people do, they sometimes act funny or do neat tricks when they want something. In this instance, Bob was asking if he could go live with God. My son asked if Bob was going to be upside down in heaven. I explained to him that Bob would be upside down in heaven because that's the only way Bob could see if my son was okay. My son asked me if God knew how to take care of Bob. I told him that, yes, God knew that a "hungry fish was a happy fish."