Tuesday, October 01, 2002

just ducky

Dad was opposed to nature and physical activity, except for his weight training in the garage, a spectacle both profound and grotesque in its own right… But already I digress.

Dad was constituted such that we didn’t do a lot of typical father-son things like football games or camping trips or bike rides, and that was fine with me. It all sounded pretty inconvenient, and regardless whether the activities could have been worthwhile under perfect circumstances I knew that dad didn’t care much for any of it.  Forcing him to undertake such efforts was likely to result in nobody having much fun. 

So I don’t know whose idea it was to take me fishing.  I don’t think I’d have thought of it, and I can’t believe I’d have chosen to learn the gentle craft of angling at the Sportsman’s Lodge in the heart of Studio City.  I considered it a gruesome pastime, and my affinity for underdogs promised to make every catch a tragedy.  But I was about five years old and he took me so I went. 

The hotel was no longer as fancy or nice as it thought it was, and the murky concrete ponds in back exhaled a potent miasma.  There were dirty stupid trout trapped in the ponds, and a handful of waterlogged ducks bobbing above them.  Dad rented me a pole - that’s the right term, isn’t it? - and his face contorted with disgust and trepidation as he baited my hook.  I dropped the line into the torpid pool.  There it dangled, awaiting only the gaping maw of an errant hunger. 

I was looking for the trout, but this place was clearly making up its own rules as it went.  So it shouldn’t have surprised me that, instead of a fish, it was a smog-addled duck that dove for my hook, swallowed it down before it knew what it was doing.

The duck put up a real bad noise as we started reeling it in.  Dad looked worried and his hair fell forward over his face.  I was upset but I don’t remember whether or not I was crying.  They didn’t let us keep the duck; I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it anyway.  It had been a Muscovy, the black and white ones with tumorous red faces.  I felt badly for it, but I couldn’t help but think that the duck had been very stupid to dive for my fishhook.  But then, had I not put that hook in the water, none of this would have even happened in the first place.  So I was responsible but the duck had been really dumb, and that didn’t matter because the duck was dead regardless.  We left well before our fishing sticks were due back to the hotel.