short stories...book excerpts...other writings...upon occasion or as prompted...
The tiger in the water? A representation of my life -- spirit and environment!

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Friday, October 29, 2010

Fishing for Men

Mommy really did grow up on a farm. It was located in the mountains of Maine, not far from the ocean. In that part of Maine there are many good ponds and excellent fishing streams. Everyone there fishes for hornpout.

Once, a couple of boys who went to school with Mommy and her sister invited them to come fishing with them. They took their fishing rods and a sack lunch and went to their friends' house.

At their friends' house, they climbed into two canoes, my Mom's sister, Karen, with Danny and Mommy with Jimmy. They spent the morning casting for fish and paddling the river that ran through Danny and Jimmy's parents' property.

By noon, they had not caught anything yet, but they still had time. They pulled the canoes up on shore side by side and sat on the riverbank. They ate their sack lunches. (Grandma had made the lunches, so they were edible.)

After lunch, they had much better luck. Everyone, that is, except Mommy. Karen caught a couple hornpout, and so did Danny. Mommy thought that maybe their canoe was in a better place in the river, but Jimmy was catching fish, too.

Jimmy told Mommy that she was not very good at casting. So, he showed her how to do it better. Mommy thought that she understood. She took the fishing pole back and did what Jimmy had showed her. The reel spun, and the line, with the hook for the fish, went flying through the air. Mommy could not see where it went, but she immediately felt that she had caught something really big. She started to really it in.

Jimmy was excited, too. He was shouting. Mommy could not hear him very well because she was concentrating on reeling in her catch. Finally she heard him.

"Stop!" he yelled. "Stop. Stop now."

Mommy did not at first understand why he wanted her to stop. Then she saw what had happened, at the same time that Jimmy explained.

"Stop! It's not a fish! You caught me!"

Mommy's hook was twisted into his t-shirt. It took Jimmy's Mom twenty minutes to get
it out.

I have heard people say that sometimes women fish for men. I've also heard other people talking someone being a good catch. I did not understand what the expression really meant until my aunt told me about Mommy's fishing trip.

Conclusion: Catching a person is not the same as catching a fish.

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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.

2 comments:

  1. Loved this sweet story and your kind visit to my blog. You are always most welcome :)

    Aloha from Honolulu


    Comfort Spiral

    ><}}(°>

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elzabeth:
    This is a cute story. You were fortunate that you only caught his shirt and not his arm or his head.( It happened to some friends of ours.)

    ReplyDelete

About Me

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I am the mother of 4 birth children (plus 3 others who lived with us) and grandmother of 2, all of them exceptional children. Married for 42 years, I grew up in Maine, live in California, and work in many places in education, linguistics, and program management. In my spare time, I rescue and tame feral cats and have the scars to prove it. A long-time ignorantly blissful atheist converted by a theophanic experience to Catholicism, I am now a joyful catechist. Oh, I also authored a dozen books, two under my pen name of Mahlou (Blest Atheist and A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God).

My Other Blogs

100th Lamb. This is my main blog, the one I keep most updated.

The Clan of Mahlou
. This is background information about various members of the extended Mahlou family. It is very much a work still in progress. Soon I will begin posting excerpts from a new book I am writing, Raising God's Rainbow Makers.

Modern Mysticism. This blog discusses the mystical in our pragmatic, practical, realistic, and rational 21st century world and is to those who spend some or much of their time in an irrational/mystical relationship with God. If such things do not strain your credulity, you are welcome to follow the blog and participate in it.

Recommended Reading List

Because I am blog inept, I don't quite know how to get a reading list to stay at the end of the page and not disappear from sight. Therefore, I entered it as my first post. I suppose that is not all that bad because readers started commenting about the books, even suggesting additional readings. So, you can participate with others in my reading list by clicking here.
I do post additional books as I read them and find them to be meaningful to me, and therefore, hopefully, meaningful to you. One advantage of all the plane traveling I do is that I acquire reading time that I might not otherwise take.
   

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