By Jack Godbey

Columnist

It’s hard to think of an animal that gets treated worse than a fish. Not only does almost every animal in the woods see them as supper, but then you have humans come along and pretend to be giving you free food but surprise, there’s a hook inside. That should serve as a lesson to you. Anytime someone offers you something free, be on the lookout for the hook.

Sure, we humans have convinced ourselves that it’s perfectly alright to trick the fish into sticking a hook through their lip because fish don’t feel pain right. If you believe that, I’ll wait while you stick a hook in your lip and then you can let me know if it hurts or not.

The farm that I grew up on had a pond that brought me tons of hours of happiness while I sat on the bank fishing. My mother had an aquarium in the house full of goldfish that were no bigger than a few inches long. Eventually, the upkeep on the aquarium became too much. I guess it was the whole taking care of four kids thing. I can clearly remember my father and I taking the aquarium out to the pond and dumping the goldfish into the water. The fish must have thought they had won the lottery. As a few years had slipped by, I returned to the pond to do a little fishing and the goldfish had been totally forgotten about. That is until my bobber went under the water and as my eyes widened and my heart started to beat a little quicker, I began to reel in my catch only to find a goldfish on the end of my hook that was nearly a foot long.

While much of my childhood was spent at that old pond, I can say that I’ve never been one to eat anything that I catch as I prefer to catch and release the fish with nothing more than a bad memory and a story to tell their fish friends. If I want to eat some fish, all I’ve got to do is go down to the Save-A-Lot and buy a bag. However, I realize that I’ve been the reason many fish started smoking and drinking as they deal with the trauma of that time. They went to eat the worm and the next thing they knew, they had a hook in their lip and looked a big bald man in the eyes. Sounds a lot like what happened to me that weekend I spent in Mexico but that’s another story.

I went out a while back with some friends to an all you can eat catfish restaurant. It was my sole intention to make them regret trying to feed me all I can eat. My friends brought along another man that I had never met before. Normally, this would be a dealbreaker for me as I don’t do strangers but as dreams of catfish danced in my head, I decided to go anyway.

I could tell that I didn’t like this guy from the beginning. He was rude to the waitress, he ordered unsweet iced tea, and then to top it all off, he said he didn’t like hushpuppies. O.K., so, it’s clear that he and I had absolutely nothing in common. Just then, the guy turned his head and sneezed. I, out of habit, said, “God bless you”. Everybody at the table looked at me like I had passed gas in church. It was then that I learned that the guy was an atheist and I had somehow offended him. A few minutes later, the man sneezed again and not knowing what to say, I just said, “I hope you don’t fall ill and die and rot in a box”. Everyone started mugging me again as I smiled and filled my jaws with delicious catfish.