What Do Angelfish Say?

When Clara Grace was only around eighteen months old, she witnessed a violent thunderstorm. She refrained from crying or screaming but did run to mommy with the request, “Thunder, hug.” Every night that week, heat thunder rippled through the sky and shook Clara Grace’s house while she slept. Each morning, she greeted her mommy with the excited announcement “Under, boom, boom!” Clara Grace’s mommy was slightly puzzled at how nonchalantly her daughter was taking the resounding rumbles. When the storms finally receded, the little girl continued to greet her mommy each morning with more news about thunder.

Whenever her parents commented, “I didn’t hear any thunder last night,” she pointed and repeated “Under!” vehemently. Finally, her daddy looked where she was pointing and noticed his colorful paintings of sea life on the walls. “Oh, you mean underwater,” he announced. “Yes, the fish are underwater.” Clara Grace continued to include “Under” in her morning discussions at least once each week. As her vocabulary grew, she commented, “Under, fish underwater.” It puzzled her mommy that even though the little girl could clearly say “Underwater, and used it appropriately at the aquarium and in the bathtub, she continued to refer to “Under” in the mornings.

Finally, more than six months later, on the morning of November the twenty-second, she met Clara Grace bouncing in her crib. “Thunder, thunder,” the little girl clearly announced during her mattress exercise routine.

Clara Grace’s mommy was befuddled, there had not been a thunderstorm for weeks and her daughter was obviously pointing out something on the wall. “Where is the thunder?” she asked Clara Grace. “Show me the thunder.” Clara Grace obligingly directed her toward a dark blue angelfish swimming on the wall opposite the crib. “This is thunder?” her mommy asked in disbelief. She picked her daughter up and brought her closer to the beautiful fish.

“Woah!” Clara Grace laughed nervously, “Funny fish, funny thunder.” Pronouncing things as “funny” had become the little girl’s way of expressing mild distrust.

“That’s a nice fish,” her mommy tried to explain. “It’s an angelfish. Do you want to pat the angelfish?” Clara Grace patted the seahorse, octopus, turtle, discus fish, and even the stingray above her rocking chair, but declined to touch the “funny thunder fish.”

After a few moments though, she summoned all her courage and reached out to stroke the angelfish lightly. “Angelfish hurt you?” she asked her mommy tentatively.

“No,” her mommy reassured her, “the angelfish won’t hurt you. The angelfish is nice.”

By the middle of December, Clara Grace was asking to pat the “nice angelfish” regularly. However, despite all her mommy’s explanations, a slight misconception prevailed. During a diaper change on Wednesday, December the fourteenth, Clara Grace asked her mommy, “What ladybug say?”

“Ladybugs don’t say anything,” her mommy informed. “They’re very quiet guys.”

Clara Grace mulled this over then added to the conversation, “Fish say ‘Boom, boom!”