Not even if he was hungry

Out on the river the boy with the striped shirt begins to consider another facet of his Christliness. The boat drifts downstream, the motor idles and occasionally engages, at the behest of the vigilant father in order to steer around corners or avoid sandbars. The boy in the striped shirt is grudging in this observation. It won't be carelessness that causes this disaster. There will be little room for schadenfreude or "I-told-you-sos" here. So he waits and watches and he does not fish.

"C'mon Paul," says his friend, the older brother. "It's not hard. It's fun!" Paul only imagines that time that he watched his older brother catch a fish and he had to try to hold it for him, while he prised the the hook out of its mouth. The slime of the scales and the sharp edges of the gills stay in his memory. He can feel them on his fingers just thinking about it. He can't imagine anything, even hunger, that would cause him to want to put himself in a position where he was the one catching the fish and asking for help to pry the hook out of that gasping maw. For an eleven year old he dwells more on discomfort and trouble than courage and adventure. 

As if on cue the rod the younger brother holds dips and he yells and the father smiles and leans forward, picking up the net in one hand and touching the bending rod with the other. "Take the line in slow," he says. They all watch as the boy listens and slowly reels in the taut line until the jackfish appears at the side of the boat to be netted and lifted into it. Together father and son unhook the fish and set it free again. Paul watches. Though his anxiousness recedes, he cannot see the point in this, much less the fun. What would Jesus do, Paul thinks, if he was a fish?

Ride report

in:        5'C wind 20ks NW

out:   10'C wind 15ks NNW