Hurting Feelings

I’ve tried very hard all my life not to hurt other people’s feelings any more than necessary, but life has shown me that there are certain times when you just can’t avoid it. 

I mean, parents understand that no matter how much you love your children, hurting their feelings is sometimes the only way to keep them from doing serious damage to themselves or others.  “I’m telling you, son, you CAN NOT fly.  DO NOT jump off that roof!”  With that I crushed my boy’s self confidence.  You know that hurt.

But there are other times when it should be simple not to hurt someone’s feelings, but, try as we might to avoid it, we do it anyway.

Such was the case when I went fishing with a friend once.

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As many of you know, the summer I was 14, I worked at Mountain Lake Hotel in Virginia.  If you’re not familiar with the hotel, it’s the one where they filmed the movie, “Dirty Dancing”.  But that was several years after I worked there.

I was employed as a dishwasher by the manager, who happened to be my Uncle Bob.  He was a great guy to work for and Mountain Lake was a great place to spend the summer.  His son and my cousin, John, was my best friend and we had an amazing summer riding horses, hiking in the mountains, meeting girls, and fishing.

Mountain Lake itself was roughly one mile long by ½ mile wide and deep enough to house all the trout and bass a young fisherman could shake a hook at.  And I shook my hook at more than a few.

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Despite my age I got along well with the waiters, most of whom were college students spending the summer stashing a little money away in the bank and having some fun in the process.  Of course, the idea that being mean to the manager’s nephew could be detrimental to their employment may have had something to do with that.  My uncle is still one of the most honest and kind-hearted and patient people I have ever known and would not have played favorites with me no matter what, but I felt it was in my best interest to keep that quiet.

Yeah.

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One of the waiters was from Washington D.C.  I’ll call him Walker because, well, I can’t remember his real name.

Walker wasn’t a braggart by any means but somehow it got to be common knowledge that his father “might” be a pilot on Airforce 1.  As the story went, his dad never said he flew the leader of the free world around, but whenever the president was out of town, so was his dad.  Again, the young man didn’t make a big deal about it but it seemed that everything he had was the best available…way better than the rest of us.  Yes, there was some jealousy but it was the kind of jealousy you get mad at yourself for because he was a chum. 

Walker and I got along pretty well, especially when he found out that I knew the best fishing spots on the lake.  The young man asked me one time if I could take him out and show him where to “get into a mess of fish.”  As long as it was a lot, he didn’t care what species.  He said he’d been sent a nice new rod and reel setup from home and wanted to try it out.

The two of us checked out a rowboat from the hotel and piled our stuff in it early the next morning.  When I say our stuff I mean his rod, reel, and the equipment I checked out of the hotel.   Whereas his must have set his parents back several hundred bucks in 1972 dollars, mine probably cost less than $25 when it was brand new.

We’d “borrowed” some sweet corn from the kitchen’s walk-in freezer.  The sweet corn’s resemblance to salmon eggs was one of my secrets for catching bluegill.  Since Walker was a friend I thought I’d introduce him to one of my best honey-holes, a big pine tree that had long ago fallen into the lake, and there wasn’t much above the water’s surface to show where it was, but there was plenty of cover down below.

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I rowed the boat to my spot and baited up.  Hovering over the sunken tree was a simple matter as the flow was minimal and the wind was at a lull that time of the morning.  A light sinker and no bobber allowed the bright yellow corn to sink slowly toward the bottom.  I watched it go and when it disappeared I knew I had my first fish.

I reeled in my line and pulled a nice sized panfish glistening into the sunlight.  Admiring the eating-size ‘gill I glanced to see that Walker was still assembling his setup.

Sounding frustrated he asked, “How do you tie a knot that won’t come loose?”

With the fish safely on a stringer I deftly tied one of my patented “loop knots” on his line and slipped the loop through the eye and over a hook.  I’ve never seen this knot described in any fishing book or magazine so I may have invented this ugly bend, but hey, it works.

As he baited his hook and wrestled with figuring out how to work the high-dollar reel, I caught a couple more eaters. He got it figured out and cast his line.  Since we were floating right over the sunken cover, his cast took the bait well away from the “hot zone.”

I caught another as I recommended that he fish the cover.  He reeled in and dropped his hook into the water.  Nothing.

I caught another and released it because I’d already hooked a few and was getting picky.  As Walker waited on his first nibble, I pulled in another.  This one was big.  Even a hog of a bluegill is not huge but this was one of the biggest panfish I’d ever hooked.  I slid it on the stringer.

I couldn’t wait to show the hotel chef, Big Jim, the stringer we were putting together. 

Well, the stringer I was putting together.

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My friend was getting frustrated.  “You must have parked me over a dead spot.” 

“Or maybe I’m a better fisherman,” I teased, then moved the oars to turn the boat and put him over the spot where I’d been, and vice versa.

A-a-a-a-nd his spot started to pay off…for me.  I caught and released some little ones and stringered a nice one or two. 

“Maybe it’s this d—-d rod.”  It was more of a wishful statement than a question.

“Could be.”  I was starting to feel a little sorry for Walker so I handed him my gear and took his, which I laid carefully in the boat.  I sat quietly watching him for a minute but honestly couldn’t see anything wrong with his technique. 

Nothing except that it didn’t work.

I carefully picked up his high-dollar rod and dropped his uneaten bait over the side.  The yellow corn spiraled into the depths, dimming as it dropped downward.  Bam!  Another bite.  He was big enough that I kept him.  I re-baited and caught another bluegill almost as soon as it dropped into the water.  Then another.

…and another.

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There wasn’t enough sun to give even the lightest-skinned person a sunburn but my friend was starting to get red.  “What the (blankety blank) is going on?”  His mouth hung loose in disbelief.  “Can we try another spot?”

We moved to another of my favorite spots, and then another, and I ended up with enough fish to feed myself and my friend, as well as my Uncle Bob, Aunt Betty, and my cousins John and Lisa.

Poor Walker never got a bite.

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To this day I can’t explain why I had such good luck and he had none.  Never got a nibble.

So, without trying and only by having good, almost unstoppable, good luck, I hurt my friend’s feelings.

As the saying goes, “If you’re not hurting feelings, you’re losing.”

Well yeah, there’s that.

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