GOD WANTS ME TO SIT

“Do you want your chair?”

That’s what I’d been asked as I pulled my fishing gear from the trunk of my car; It was a fold up chair tucked in a nylon-canvas bag. I had already pulled three fishing poles, the Taj-Mahal of tackle boxes, and a five-gallon bucket from the back seat. I had worked all day, was tired (more so mentally then physically) and hemmed-and-hawed about whether I should carry one more item a half-mile from the dead end street where I had parked to the fishing hole near the I-94 overpass. I certainly wouldn’t overburden my coworker with a luxury item that I alone would use. I knew I could lug it. Or not.

Here was my real dilemma: Do I fish standing up? Or do I fish sitting down? Do I use fishing lures, spinners, dancing baby eels? Or do I fish the bottom with a Carolina Rig and worms? And what about my telescopic fishing pole? — I’d use that with a bobber attached to the line. Definitely something I could watch from a sitting position. After a day of multi-tasking in a prison, you would think I’d choose one way to fish and stick with it. Hey, fishing’s supposed to be relaxing, however, in the back of my mind, if the fish were biting I would be standing, and if the fish weren’t biting, I’d be pacing back and forth wondering what to use, what to do next.

I knew the answer, it was based on my desire to increase my chances of catching fish—blue gills, perch, catfish, sheephead, dogfish, bass, pike, you name it—I’d put forth a monumental effort at reeling in a genuine, bonafide, whale-of-a-fish. I gave him the most logical answer I knew, “I’m going to skip the chair. I won’t be needing it.”

After two hours of catching absolutely nothing, my coworker hit a snag, and after tugging and pulling from every angle imaginable, he caught a #$&&@^* chair!!! We quit soon after that. I wasn’t about to sit down.