You Can Call Me Bobby

Many years ago, my father and I would go fishing together. This was never really up my alley, but since it equated to some rare one-on-one time with my dad I was quite happy to participate.

We would drive out to the badlands of middle Tennessee where some pre-stocked fish ponds awaited us with their bounty. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, I'd like to give a shout out to the poor bastard(s) who opened his or her locker at Franklin High School only to be met with a sunshine yellow bumper sticker reading "I Got Hooked at the Bucksnort Trout Ranch!" Y'all might think it's lame, but there was some serious blood, sweat, and tears that earned the sticker festooning that locker. Respeck!

Anyway, one day during one of these fishing expeditions I suffered a sudden fit of... something. I glanced down at the fish we'd caught. They were laying in the dirt frantically gasping for air. I knelt down and looked at them, eyeball to eyeball. Upon considering the fact that they were laying there slowly dying in front of me, I felt quite guilty. I reached out with my finger and rubbed their cold, twitchy bellies. I wanted them to feel that they were cared for, because in my ten year-old mind that was the best thing I could do for them.

At some point my father must have noticed this, because he asked if I was alright. I looked at him with very wet eyes and a very snotty nose and asked him if the fish were hurting. He tried hard to mask his disgust at the fact that his goofy-ass daughter was so emotionally invested in the feelings of some freaking catfish, then let out a big sigh and sat down, mentally exhausted. Clearly he knew that his little girl was a freak who could not be reasoned with, so he cunningly employed the time-honored parental tactic of interjecting religious dogma where it doesn’t belong, and told me that Jesus used to catch fish so how bad could it be? I reacted as any red-blooded American girl in the South would. I stood up, dried my tears, baited my hook, and proceeded to catch as many of those slimy, smelly bastards as I could. Because I was fishing for Jesus.

Looking back now, I cannot believe that this story has not been made into a very special episode of King of the Hill.