Twentyseven

"Just think about the fish!"

He'd always say, "just think about the fish."

The summers of my youth were punctuated by weekly fishing trips to the pond near my grandfather's dairy farm. My father was always so excited about these trips, and I was as well, though for different reasons. He told my mother it was all about the 'quality time' he got to spend with me. Only, even in adulthood, I don't see the quality he told my mother about. We'd sit in absolute silence.

And that's why I was excited.

I would tell him I was thinking about the fish. I was, but not in the same way he was. Same words can mean differently. I don't know how many, at six, grasp the duplicitousness of language, the easy lies of it all.