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Tuesday, September 06, 2011  

On the Hook

When I went up to the cabin to meet M. Edium a month ago, he'd already been there for a few days. He was excited to see me, running up and giving me a hug and a kiss, but as is often the case, he was bursting with news. While I was trying to say hi to him, and my parents and my sister, he was all but shouting in my face, "I caught six fish!"

We're all familiar with the concept of traits skipping a generation. In my case, some traits seem to have skipped a generation so thoroughly I didn't think they'd land on the next one.

My dad loves fishing, and used to take us out on the boat as a family all the time. I think I was into it for a while, but eventually I lost interest in the waiting and the baiting, and instead took to bringing a book to read under the bow. So that's how I spent a lot of those voyages. Fortunately, Trash does like fishing, so she was happy to go out on the lake with him during our trips to the cabin after we got married, and thus she became the son my dad never had. If that sounds bitter, it's not meant to be; they each have someone to fish with, and I don't have to.

I didn't think M. Edium would get into fishing, really. Sometimes, when he's over at my parents' house, my dad will take him across the street to fish in the river, but I can't imagine they spend much time down there. M. Edium barely has the patience to sit through his favorite movies, let alone the time it takes to get a bite on a fishing line.

So then I got there and he tells me about having caught so many fish in one outing that the level of the lake had gone down, and he drags us all down to the dock so he can show off his catch in the live well of my dad's boat, and how it was all about using the right lerr (that's how he pronounces "lure," as "lerr").

Obviously he's been bitten by the fishing bug. Or, since we're talking about fishing, by the fishing disgusting, slimy invertebrate that some people like to carry around in Styrofoam containers full of dirt.

I was worried that I was going to have to take him tackle shopping. I've been tackle shopping once before, as a result of a bizarre series of tragic circumstances that even I can barely remember through a haze of humiliated confusion, and I'm not eager to repeat the experience. The whole rest of the time we were there, M. Edium kept reminding me we'd have to stop at the sporting goods store in town on the way home to buy an exact replica of the fishing lerr he'd been so successful with. I said I'd look for it, and I did, but I also didn't turn around and drive back through town again when I wasn't able to spot it the first time through. But that was okay, because it wasn't like I was going to take him fishing before my dad, who after all still had the original.

Since we got home, M. Edium's passion for fishing has abated somewhat, although this weekend when he heard that my parents were out on the boat near their house with my younger sister, he all but grabbed the phone to make sure no one else was using his lerr (since they were still tied to the dock, nobody was). I'm sure he'd still love it if he could make fishing a regular thing. Am I going to have to learn about all this? All the arcana and esoterica involved? Will I have to one day buy a boat?

If I do, I'm going to make sure it's really comfortable under the bow.

posted by M. Giant 3:26 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

I am regular follower of your blog. I like your post. I like your approach to handle things. This post is personal and thus I want to thank you for sharing your experience with us. Keep writing such wonderful thoughts.

By Anonymous download free movies, at October 19, 2011 at 3:12 AM  

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