No. I’m not taking about the film Finding Nemo. The happy clown fish that’s inspiring me right now is a 7-year old little man who wants to be a clown fish in his first school play.
When I received the letter from the teacher stating that the kids were free to choose whatever fish they wanted for the play, I first thought is that this was going to make it easier. We could improvise a blue fish... a standard-looking blue fish. Nothing complicated. After all, blue is his favorite color.
I was so sure that he was going to be just fine with the blue fish idea. When we first discussed it, he immediately was “on board” with it. Well, at that time, probably he wasn’t paying too much attention.
Now that the play is approaching, a week earlier, my son starts reminding me about the play. He’s eager to get to work on his costume.
One afternoon when I went to pick him up from school, he took me to the stage they are preparing for the play. He pointed to a certain spot and showed me where he would be standing. He went up there and stood exactly where he was going to be standing, waving his hands at me to make sure I knew where to sit to better see him that day.
He stepped down the stage, grabbed me by the hand, and with a lot of enthusiasm and bright open excited eyes, he told me that he wanted to be a clown fish.
A clown fish!
I started stuttering in disbelief. Trying to use some mom-persuasion, I explained him that it was going to be very difficult to try to make a clown fish costume with not much time left.
The next day, I started doing some “market research” in various stores to see if I could find a Nemo-type costume, without any luck. I went that night online to get ideas and found a few pictures of the fish and possible “easy to do” clown fish costumes. I didn’t notice he was looking over my shoulder...
As soon as I came across with a very nice professionally-made clown fish costume on the computer screen, I heard: “Yes mom! Yes! That’s the one I like!” My little man was so excited and jumping with joy, while giving me his approval.
The thing is that I was looking at a very different side of the screen! I was staring at another picture of one fairly simple design I could manage to prepare myself—with his help.
I was speechless… He was sooo excited. I was perplexed trying to figure out what just happened. He was running around to get his brother to show him the clown fish costume he was going to wear.
I printed the page of the outfit I was looking at, and showed it to him. I was looking for the words to explaining him my very limited ability to prepare creative costumes. I also told him that I didn’t have luck looking for an already made clown fish costume that day. I even tried putting a lot of excitement in describing him the process and the materials we were going to use... the fun that we were going to making the it.
He was staring at me. His enthusiasm was not as great as before, but to my surprise, he gently understood with a soft “okay.” In no time, that 7-year old little man gave me a hug as comfort. I believed he could “sense” my dilemma and took pity on me. Suddenly he turns back like nothing happened, and immediately continued playing with his brother.
The next day, I kept thinking about what happened...
How could this boy at his little age felt that my anxiety was probably larger than his disappointment! How he decided to give me comfort and save me from all the stress!
That day, I went to a specialized seamstress shop—which by the way I tried to avoid previously. There were many already prepared costumes of anything you can imagine, but nothing as a child-sized clown fish.
But as to what happened next, I have a secret...
In that specialized shop, there is a beautiful child-sized clown fish outfit like the “one on the screen” being made. And in my mind, there is a very happy clown fish waving at me from the stage.