I’m not sure that I like the whole forgiveness idea. When my rebbi taught us this past week about Yom Kippur and told us how wonderful it is to learn to forgive others, everyone in the class nodded, except me. I wondered whether they were ever asked to forgive someone for the unforgivable. I’ll bet their little brother never made them lose a best friend. How can you forgive someone who takes something like that away from you?

It all started with the massive carnival that’s held every summer. I went with Nosson, my older brother, who’s pretty much perfect in every way — which is what I’ll never be. “I’m going to win that prize,” Nosson said as soon as we got there, pointing to a sleek remote-controlled race car that had more gadgets than a spaceship. Something else caught my eye, something that I thought was the very best prize in the entire carnival. It was a large, bright, orange goldfish with two bold black stripes across its back. It was in a fishbowl at the “Hit the Bull’s-Eye” booth. Right next to the booth, a man’s painted clown face stuck out through a hole in a large cardboard. The sign on the cardboard read, “Hit the clown on the nose and make it squeak!” I was never very good at hitting a bull’s-eye.

So while Nosson ran around winning tickets from every booth to get his grand remote-controlled car prize, I waited on line by the bull’s-eye booth. I tried again. And again. Because if you throw wet sponges in the vicinity of a clown’s nose 432 times, chances are, you’ll hit it at least once. The booth was a wet, soapy mess by the time I left with my treasured goldfish. Nosson and I were the two happiest kids on the planet when we walked home with our prizes in our hands.

“Ooh,” my little brother Shuey said as soon as I walked into the house with my striped orange fish. “Don’t touch, or else!” I hollered back. I bolted up the stairs and placed my goldfish on the highest shelf in the room, at least three feet away from the reach of sticky five-year-old hands.

I fed the goldfish the food that I got at the carnival. I watched as he dove for it and then swished his tail happily. When I poked him with my pencil, he spun around violently. I took a picture of him with my instant camera. I measured him with my ruler. I looked at him through my magnifying glass and counted his scales.

“Izzy, supper will be ready soon!” my mother called. “Coming!” I said, as I hung up the new picture of my fish on the pegboard in my room. I posted a paper next to the picture and wrote:

Fish’s name: Tiger

Length: 3.8 centimeters

Number of scales: 87

Hobbies: Likes to swish his tail. Does not appreciate being poked with a pencil. (Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr., Issue 727)