The enveloping shadow of the courthouse shook the little girl with doubt. The words of suits, ties, and judgmental eyes ran through her mind. She was worried sick.

“You’re not supposed to do it, you know?” she whimpered up at her mother.

“Don’t worry about it,” came the curt reply, as they hurried along the enduring streets of La Ville-Lumière. “Nobody cares,” mother insisted, tightening her grip on the child’s hand. “They don’t enforce most of the laws. They don’t have the time. They’re just there to scare you. Remember that.”

Iconoclasm was a jarring notion to the hopeless tyke. On one side of the scales: mother; on the other side of the sales: teachers, police officers, politicians, et al. And the courthouse, she worried, it was so scary to a child’s eyes. The architect's intent to intimidate with bricks and blocks was beyond the babe's comprehension.

They were on their way to the river to release their pet goldfish before they hit the rails.

This was, of course, the crime she was worried about. Releasing a goldfish into the city’s river was illegal. “God help the native fish”—that was the logic at least. But, a bright orange fish—no matter how ravenous, no matter how gluttonous—would soon find itself prey for the herons and the pike.

From the apex of the arched bridge, mother tipped the bowl and Goldie splashed into the river and was gone.

“Do you think Goldie will be okay in the river?”

“She’ll be fine.”

Parenthood challenges the most honest of us.