Love Makes Us Do Strange Things

When I met Glen, there were a lot of things that I used to do that I had stopped doing. Now that I'm married to someone who enjoys those things, I'm back to doing them again. The things we do for love. 

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of fishing. I'd either fish from the end of the dock if we were camping, or I'd go out with the boys in the boat and see what we could catch.

Then I grew up, went to school, started my career and just sort of left all of that in the dust.

People used to ask me to go fishing and I would always say, "OK, but I don't bait hooks and I don't touch fish." That is, until this past weekend.

Glen used to go fishing all the time with his dad, and when Glen became a dad, he taught his girls how to fish. He isn't the type to disappear for a whole weekend and just go fishing to escape the family, but he did enjoy it when we went.

Over the weekend, Glen and I were going through the garage and he found some of his old fishing stuff, so he monkeyed with it for a bit and it worked like a charm, so he convinced me to give fishing a try again. We packed up and headed for our local fishing spot.

Sunday afternoon, the fish were biting like crazy. Glen baited my hook, I dropped my line and not 10 seconds later, I pulled a small crappie out of the water. I brought my pole over to Glen and said, "Here you go. Help, please," because I was NOT about to touch a slimy floppy fish and he wouldn't help me. I put the fish back in the water, hoping that the fish would come unhooked and it didn't.

I didn't want the poor thing to die because I wanted to catch it again and Glen was busy getting his line ready, so I had to do it myself. EW! (Now I know why it's called "crappie flopping". WOW.) Glen encouraged me that I could take it off myself and it wasn't going to bite, but still, EW! I wanted him to think I could handle this whole fishing thing, so I reluctantly grabbed it with my bare hand and took the hook out of its mouth.

Then I remembered I had socks on, so I took my socks off and made them into "fishing mittens", so that's what I used to take the fish off the hook. I caught fish after fish after fish after fish. We caught so many, we lost count! I only truly needed help with one fish that would not come off the hook. Otherwise, I took them all off myself. It still doesn't make it any less gross and it doesn't mean I like touching fish. I just know I can do it.

Now that I have my rod and reel and my trusty "fishin' mittens", I can't WAIT to go back out and wet a line.