Blunt Wit

So in the foggy past my son and I were playing golf at the local 9-hole short course and happened to get paired with a Frenchman and his 14 year old son. On the seventh hole young Benjie fired his approach shot into the butt of one of the many geese who were rutting and strutting on the course, it being the mating season and all.

Gerrard, his loquacious father, said in a toasty French accent, “Nice birdie!”

I winced (while chuckling inside). Jokes that bad should come with a money back guarantee. I missed my subsequent real birdie putt. Damn lame joke!

But this is all digression.

My story begins a few minutes later on the tee box of the 9th hole as I sized up my many options. A sneaky little hole.

Meandering stream to the left where vagabonds straight out of a Mad Max movie hung out on the banks and prayed for you pull your tee shot so they could collect your ball out of the creek and sell it to the Pro shop (for you to buy it back the following week).

Fairway for Hole One on your right where you risk bodily harm and a lawsuit if you slam your tee shot into any one of the approaching unsuspecting golfers. No, the only play on this hole was right up the middle. The arguably weakest point of my game!

Thus lost in my Tiger Woods moment, without warning, I felt something hit me on my back, just under my right shoulder, hard. I spun around half expecting to see that I had been hit by a ball but to just catch out of the corner of my eye three geese flying overhead.

My back/shoulder suddenly felt … warm. So I pulled my shirt around and lo and behold I had been pelted with goose shit! Dive bombed! Seriously, I didn’t know geese could do that. Be that resourceful. Be that vengeful (as I think his or her load was meant for Benjie’s head and I, an innocent bystander, was caught in the goose shit crossfire). Most of it, greenish in color, still clung to my yellow shirt.

My son laughed up a storm as he helped me scrape it off. Needless to say that night at the dinner table my son reported the entire incident to the rest of the family who laughed uproariously.

I was still pissed I missed that birdie putt.

Have you ever been shit upon – either literally (like me in this case) or figuratively?

Some days insight fills you like helium does a balloon.  You float along with a merry lightness of being.  And sometimes the signposts of life light up in bright neon and suddenly you know where you are going and why you are here.
Sadly, my tale today describes the other sort of day.  The one where you are lost, dazed and confused.  Where you finally realize you are mortal, your days are dark, aimless and possibly numbered.
It started out looking fine.  By early afternoon, a bright sun toasted the crisp fall air to a comfortable 65 degrees.  A light breeze blew out of the south.  Trees swayed with a lazy carelessness.  And the river ran ominously high but decidedly fishable.
My Mom brought us to the baptismal pool because, you may find this hard to believe, I have never fly fished before.  She of course ties her own flies and is known as a trout whisperer.  Old timers round these parts say she can talk the spots off a brown brook trout.  And, hell, even the color off a rainbow.  Anyway, she had begun to teach those gifts to my son.
Me, I was a hopeless cause.  As an unabashed spin caster, I had always looked down on my cane pole whipping, fly tipping brethren. As opposed to tricking them with fake, manmade womanly wisps, I preferred to lure my fish into my possession with brutal honesty and real manly bait.
Anyway, all becomes clear on the river, or so they say.
I wandered out to some rippling rapids where the trout loved to frolic and cast up into the froth and let my fly float down aimlessly.  On my inaugural cast I landed a huge red maple leaf then broke out into a frighteningly loud rendition of ‘Oh Canada.’
By my third cast, I had tangled my line and began cursing.  By my forth, I had hooked myself and nearly fell in.
I noticed the water running swifter now but lazered in on my goal of catching Old Nellie, the spotted brown trout everyone round these parts dreamed of catching.
Then, yoo hoo, I got a nibble.  Reeling it in, I realized I had caught an apple.  I mean, really, how good do you have to be to snag fruit out of a raging river?
Finally after what might have been the 10,000th lame cast something came after my fly with a vengeance.  I heard the reel scream as she took the line out hard.  I fought to regain control.  Then she turned on me like some sort of shark trout.  Old Nellie for sure!  As I labored to reel the line in, she wriggled off.
Then I suddenly realized the water seemed to be rising with a purpose.  Some gosh darn engineer up river must have decided hours earlier that he or she wanted to make some piddly electricity and put me in grave mortal danger.  There I stood in the middle of the river, like a gosh darn fool.  My Mom and son hugged the shore a few hundred meters, or was it yards, away.  Unlike me, they knew and respected the fickle nature of nature.
With the water now threatening to sweep me away I made a beeline for the shore.  I screamed and waved but they thought I was just being right neighborly and waved back.
I could have sworn I saw Old Nellie eyeing me hungrily as I almost slipped once or twice on the slick rocky bottom.
Well, needless to say, I made it back to tell this tale.  But I wonder if I’ll ever fly fish again.  Too much realization of mortality in too short a time span can bear down heavy on a man.

What mundane activities spawn high drama for you?
Have you ever been fly fishing?
Or in grave, mortal danger?  How did you escape?

What goes around comes around, funny how life has a way of balancing everything out.

Several years ago when we were visiting my brother in California his young panicky cat slipped under his car and refused to come out. After a watching the entire family try to coax the timid kitten out, I sauntered up and with no uncertain amount of bravado blustered, “Let me get him out, I speak Cat.” So I squatted down and let loose an authoritative “Meow.” “Darn if I don’t sound like a cat,” I thought to myself. And then, wouldn’t you know it, Boots came tumbling right out. My young kids looked at me in awe. Being totally within character, I took full credit for this feline rescue.

So from that point on M and S actually believed that I spoke Cat. I’m not kidding. At the zoo they exhorted me to translate for the Tigers. To laugh at the Lions. I told them, “Lions are proud creatures that wouldn’t admit to speaking lowly House Cat,” while suppressing a big chuckle. They implored me to yell at the Jaguars to come over and bare their fangs. This myth not only perpetuated for years, but in fact, grew in stature. One day not long after the original “Boots incident” while at the park M, knowing that I already spoke Cat, on a lark asked me if I also barked Dog. “Well, heck, once you purr a little Cat, what’s a little Dog,” I thought to myself. So I said “Yes,” barked at a dog to come over and wouldn’t you know it – he did! This marvelous myth persisted for years. I teased them mercilessly and laughed and laughed (on the inside). I became so full of myself.

But then life has a way of slipping away as air slowly hisses out of a holey bike tire. I don’t know exactly when or how, but sort of like the invisible deflating of the Santa Claus or Tooth fairy myths, one day I woke up to find that my kids didn’t believe I spoke Cat or Dog anymore. In fact, in a rude turnabout, they had taken to piteouslessly teasing me about it when I continued to “meow” and “bark” away at rogue pets. Which stung mightily because, truth be told, after so many years of them believing, I had come to the inexorable conclusion that I actually could speak to animals.

To this day, I still believe with all my heart that my perfect pitched purr will get through to those cats without the odd hearing impairment or personality disorder.

“Meow.” “Meow.” “Prrrrrrrr.”