Drowning Worms

Let me tell you that I have never been one for fishing. I have actually made brutal, relentless fun of fishing. I have scorned it, I would say, as much as I have scorned camping, maybe even as much as I have scorned coasters. But my little boy loves to fish, so I fish with him, because he loves it, and because he says things like, "Patience, Mother, you must have patience to catch a fish." He says this because the very first time we went fishing, out in the Chesapeake, he caught one. I was thinking in those days, those beautiful halcyon days, that just hanging a worm twelve inches down into sixty feet of water wouldn't yield any kind of result. Was I wrong.

So today was another boating day and therefore another fishing day. We purchased our little green styrofoam container of worms. We motored our little boater out onto Broad Bay. We got out our poles, dusted off our optimism, and I installed my "supportive mommy" expression. We skewered our little wormlets, dropped them in, and waited. Nothing. Even though the wretched fish were jumping, actually jumping out of the water all around the boat. Now I don't pretend to be an expert on what lure or what hook or liner or tickler or whatever is needed to pry which breed of fish out of its ocean home. But I do feel that when fish are actually trying to get out of the water, all around me, I should be able to get one on a hook that's loaded with fish lunch.

But no. For an hour, we sat there with these bratty little fish leaping through the air over the boat, waving their little fins, winking their little googly eyes, and tittering amongst themselves.

Until Team Husband got out his casting net, threw it out, and immediately brought in a whole pile of fish. The same little fishes who had been taunting us with vile taunts. So, charmingly, the children got to pet the fish, examine the fish, identify them with their little fish-identifying manual, and release (of course) them back into the bay to torture other boaters.

Okay, the fish we welcomed into the boat were a lot smaller than they had looked when they were frothing and foaming in the waves all around us. But they had markings, and slime, and fins. Which is all we really require. So, we drowned a bunch of worms with no result, but it's nice when Dad gets to be a hero, right? To my girl sensibilities, it actually seems fairly glorious to get the radiant smile without having to deal with the fish hook and worms.

Am I truly a reformed wuss when it comes to stabbing worms? Or am I going to look back on these experiences and say, "I can't believe what I did for this child!" How about you -- worms or no worms?

Fishing? Really?

Another family experience we force ourselves to suffer through, so that our children can at least appear to be normal.

I was against it. My sole experience with fishing was when I was five or six, at a pond in Pennsylvania, during the 4H Fishing Derby, where Curtis Craig put a worm on my hook and then sternly ignored me as I sat next to him at the edge of the pond, in sheer horror at the gyrations of my unfortunate worm. After a while, I was allowed to quit fishing.

Benny decided he wanted to be a fisherman at church. You can guess what the verse was. He asked for fishing gear as his reward for completing the 50 day violin practice challenge. He got it.

I wasn't aware that by dangling a worm from a 10 dollar fishing pole, 12 inches below the surface of the Chesapeake Bay, that you could actually catch something. Apparently you can:







Fishing was strange. We convinced him to release the fish. Here are three conversations that Benny had shortly after catching his fish:

Me: Benny, don't you want to release the fish so that he can be happy and live a full life and tell all his friends about meeting you?
Him: No, I want to kill him and make him into fish sticks and eat him. That's what you're supposed to do.
(And I was worried about his sensitive feelings.)

Me: Benny I'm so proud of your patience! You were so patient!
Him: Do you think God is proud of me?
Me: Yes, of course.
Him: Because I'm a fisherman now?
(I don't think he's going to make a good Episcopalian. He always interprets scripture in a literal way.)

Me: Wow, Benny. Catching a fish is something that I have never done in my whole life.
Him: Is that because you didn't have enough patience?
Me: Well, yes, probably it is.
Him: Don't worry. You gave birth to a son who has patience.
(Hey. Something to comfort myself with.)

Look Ma! No Jellyfish!

The jellyfish are gone from Broad Bay!!! WHY!?!? Not that I miss them, no, no, not a bit. But... where did they go? I know where we went -- SWIMMING.

Saturday was not so great. Saturday ended with us in the ER at CHKD getting a stitch in Benny's lip, because our 10 month old Boston Terrier puppy, Leroy, didn't appreciate being simultaneously sat on and peeled off of the pig ear he was gnawing. Well, I guess I wouldn't either -- eat a pig ear that is. But, Saturday is neither here nor there.

What's important is *SUNDAY*.

We woke up late and missed church, what with the late night in the ER and everything, and this is the *second* time Leroy has left a mark on Benny, and I really didn't relish telling the ladies at church that, yes, again, our completely innocuous puppy had marred our completely innocuous child, yes, and this time with stitches, how inexplicable, how droll.

We had a leisurely morning, stuffed Benny full of antibiotics, ate a substantive lunch, and then did what all parents do whose children are wounded -- we went tubing on Broad Bay! The water on the Chesapeake and in the ocean was rough, I guess from the influence of Florence, who is brewing out there in the Atlantic. So, we pointed the boat toward Broad Bay, kind of disappointed. Broad Bay is always our second choice. We prefer scouting for dolphins around the light house.



But this time it was really different! For two reasons:

First, the air show. Now, I'm not a big fan of air shows. I don't like crowds, don't like airplanes, don't like loud noises, don't like... really... any element of an air show at all. My two year old daughter, however, is in love with airplanes, my husband is so geeked about airplanes he's about to get his pilot's license, and my six year old son is reasonably infatuated with them too, so we went last year. I did not like it. This year, I pretended it did not exist. However, it DID exist, and as we pulled into the end of Linkhorn Bay, we realized a bunch of boats had put out anchors to watch -- THE BLUE ANGELS!!!

Watching the show from the boat was great, because it wasn't in the middle of a crowd of people and I wasn't standing on concrete. We got to see most, if not all, of the maneuvers, and the kids loved it. My husband's eyebrow twitched in an appreciative way, so you know he was really enjoying himself. And I didn't have too terrible of a time. What bothers me is the fact that the noise is so close to the threshold of "too loud" that it seems like it could just pop over the border at any moment, become *too loud*, and shatter my skull. But, that didn't happen.



The second wonderful thing that happened is this: as we were scooting around on the boat I was noticing that there weren't any jellyfish. Even when we threw Benny in the tube and hauled him around for a while -- no jellyfish. It seemed almost like there were *no jellyfish* in the Bay! This would mean that a person could actually swim or waterski or whatever without constantly getting electrocuted by the little floating deathglops. So we DID. We swam over to the beach in the narrows, which is part of First Landing Park, and the kids had a great time. It was soooo nice to actually SWIM in Broad Bay!

Obviously, the air show was a scheduled event, and not a mysterious happening, engineered by the universe to provide us with entertainment. But the total lack of jellyfish really did seem like a magical occurence -- I feel like we were in the water this time last year and there were just *buckets* of them. They are *always* there, ruining our swimming, getting in our pants, causing us distress. But yesterday they weren't. And it was great. Because Benny had such a miserable time on Saturday evening, getting that one awful stitch in the ER -- yesterday's perfect afternoon was just what the doctor ordered.

Then to make it supereducationalized, when they got home, Dan and Benny and Sadie sat down with Microsoft Flight Simulator and the joystick and actually got to simulate flying the same jet the Blue Angels fly! Sadie crashed repeatedly but Benny was pretty good. No, son. No jet pilot future for you! Mommy needs peace! Be an architect!