A Fish Tale

 For this week’s Fun Monday, Olive has asked us to tell about a whopper of a fish story.  I signed up knowing that I’m pretty good at coming up with quite the story from just a little kernel of truth.  (Just ask my family…it drives them nuts when I use my Creative License to liven up a tale.  Only once or twice of course…)

Despite having a week to come up with a great story…I’ve got nothing.  See, you have to have at least that kernel of truth in there.  I’ve only been fishing twice in my life, and neither was a good experience for me.

The first time I went fishing was in the Pacific when I was a kid.  All I really remember is that the grown ups drank a lot and that I caught a sand shark.  Somehow that shark got twisted up in my mind with a movie that I had watched. (I think I’m scarred for life.)

The next time was on a Co-Op preschool field trip to the Trout Pond.  The pond was really a shallow cement pool with nasty looking water in it. We helped our children drop a pre-baited hook into the water and waited about ten seconds until one of the many starving trout attacked it.  Then a “fisherman” that worked there took it off the hook and wrapped it up for us. 

I tried really hard not to show my horror at such cruelty to my daughter who was beaming with pride.  Then I suggested that we give that very special fish to friends of ours.  Thankfully she agreed. (There was no way I was going to clean and eat that poor fish.)

Of course that reminds me of the time my dad brought home a monster sized fish from somewhere and insisted that I clean it for him.  That poor dead fish and I looked each other in the eye and I lost it.  It was the first of many times that I became a vegetarian. 

I’m sure a better person than me could write a heck of a story about any of those…but I’m still waaaay too traumatized.  

Poor me…