Carnies and free fish

One of the most interesting aspects of the county fair has to be the carnival.  When I play 3 truths and a lie with my students I like to tell them that I was briefly a carny.  It is essentially true...when the carnival came to my hometown one year they were short on ticket takers and such, so they hired a bunch of us to work in the booths selling tickets...it was interesting to say the least.

At this year's county fair The Girl talked us into buying tokens.  Interesting side note...there are no longer ticket sellers at the fair...you put your money in a changer, kind of like the ones at the laundromat for quarter, and get tokens. The folks who run the rides collect the tokens..no more paper tickets.

So after going through the fun house, she decided that games were the way to go.  After watching Despicable Me, she, of course wanted to play a game that would allow her to win something big and fluffy.  She tried basketball (no win) then both kids tried the ping pong ball toss.  Between the two kids they tossed 19 ping pong balls with no luck...then number 20?  Right in the bowl of water.  What do you win in the ping pong ball toss, you might ask?  Well, it wasn't big and fluffy...it was

 A goldfish!  (Oh, joy...or sigh...whatever)

 The Girl does seem pretty happy though :)

 Issue #1...what do you do with a goldfish?  Both Mr. Ranch and I had fish (or our siblings did, rather) as kids, but we don't have anything resembling a bowl/tank/whatever.  So...off to PetsMart we went.  According to the clerks there, we were about the 5th family that came in with a "fair fish" during their shift.  We did manage to make it out for far less than the $86 bill that the clerks claimed another family spent on the "free" fish.  Our justification is that minnows are 15 cents (My brother used to buy them for a nickel...oh, inflation!) so if the goldfish dies, we'll get a couple minnows...We have a zoo (er, ranch?) here anyway, so what's one more little fishy? (Ha!)

 We brought little Goldie the goldfish home and put her in a temporary bowl so we could prepare the tank.  I don't remember "preparing the tank" for fish as a kid, but that's what the directions on the tank say, so we followed the directions.

 Doesn't he (she?) look happy (the four circle blobs are food, the fish is in the top center).  Oh, and The Girl is happy, too!

This post was supposed to go live tonight, but in light of the untimely death of the fish...well, whatever :)  The fish is no longer with us in any case...no one ran around the house screaming "Mrs. Fish is dead" (like my brother did when his fish died and he got a puppy to replace it). This fish lasted a week...care to place bets on how long the next fish will live?  Sigh...