Being a Hero

Our oldest (Big Brother) loves fish and fishing.  Rather, he loves the idea of fishing.  His attention span does not hold up long enough to actually fish.  But very time we go for a walk in the neighborhood, he talks about going to see the fish.  When we see someone fishing, we stop and watch.  When they actually catch something, BB examines the fish as if he were studying every scale.

 

So, after some not-so-subtle prodding by DearWife, I made the ‘decision’ to take the plunge and get hooked up with some fishing equipment.  I know nothing about fishing.  But how difficult can it be to catch a bluegill in a retention pond?  Now, BB has three danger times during the day: Pre-Lunch, Pre-Nap, and Post Nap\Pre Dinner.  You cross him during one of those times, and you risk a short war.

 

So, being the smart guy I am, I decided to take BB with to Target to get the gear….right before lunch.  I figure, he’ll love the fishing stuff, I’ll be a hero. We get to the fishin’ aisle, and I start to scope out my options.  They have 18,000 crappy (I assume they’re crappy, as its Target and not Bass Pro Outlet), and like 3 choices for floaters and plastic worms and stuff.  I picked out the hooks and bait and a box to put it all in.  So far, so good.

Now, onto the key choice: rod.  They have 3 kids’ rods (Scooby-Doo, Barbie, and one other).  The kids’ rods are 2-2.5 feet long.  I am trying to picture BB casting a rod almost as long as he is, and with a sharp object attached to the end of it.  Ain’t gonna happen.  So then I try to picture me casting a 2.5 foot long Scooby-Doo rod.  That wasn’t appealing, so I thought that maybe a better option would be to buy a real rod (for like $10 more), and just let BB help me out when I’m reeling in the fish.  I rationalized that he’s not going to have the attention span to do it anyway, and, hell, I would like the solace of fishing for 30 minutes every now and then.  So I proudly throw my $20 rod in the cart next to BB.

BB loved it.  He loved it so much, that he swung it from one side of the aisle to the other.  After a near decapitation, I was forced to take it away from him.  This did not make BB happy.  He went into immediate tantrum mode.  Fortunately, I was able to redirect him and the tantrum was only about 5 minutes or so.  The upside is that all the young mothers hanging out on Saturday morning were pretty impressed (maybe amused is a better term) at how I was handling it.

 

Over lunch, I explain to DearWife the thought process behind the 5.5 foot rod.  She summed it up as “So this is about you?  It’s about you not wanting to look silly with a 2.5 foot rod?”  I vainly tried to explain the logic behind the big rod.  I could see that I was not going to win that argument.

So immediately after lunch, we headed back to Target.  I was again thinking “I’ll be a hero, he’ll LOVE getting a new rod.”  When we got to the rod aisle, he started asking for another big rod.  He was unhappy with the Scooby Doo rod.  We did manage to amuse more women browsing at Target though.  So that’s nice.

 

When he was down for his nap, I attached the plastic fish used to practice casting.  “I’ll be a hero” I think, not learning from recent history.  As soon as he got up, I showed him how to cast.  He’s enthralled….with the plastic fish.  He runs to it and picks it up.  “Take it off. I NEED it.”  Uh, kid, it doesn’t come off, it’s for practice, see, here’s how you…..This time, there were no Target women to amuse.  DearWife came to the rescue with some fruit snacks (in BB’s world fruit snacks are the food of the Gods).  And she was a big hero.