Teach A Man To Fish…

The husband of a friend of mine is in a bit of a foul mood at the moment because his new fishing rod is broken.

“It’s the replacement for his old new rod,” my friend told me, “which he didn’t even get to use because I lost it before he even had a chance to use it.” When I raised an eyebrow at this she continued. “It fell off the boat,” she explained simply.

“And that was your fault because….?”

“I was the only person in the boat.” Ahhh.

She’s one of those rare wives who loves fishing as much as her husband.

So last weekend they went away for a couple of days down the coast and she was taking their son out to give the replacement rod its maiden cast while dad watched some footy.

Having just loaded her son and their fishing gear into the elevator, she turned to grab the esky and heard the doors shut.

“Bugger!” she thought to herself.

“Mum?” came the muffled call from the other side of the doors.

“Don’t panic!” she called to her son in a shrill sort of a voice. She pressed the button to get them to open again. Nothing happened. “Don’t panic!”

“I’m not, Mum,” said her son. “But the door won’t open. I’m pressing the buttons.”

Then she noticed something was sticking out between the doors. It was her husband’s fishing rod.

But this isn’t when it broke.

She abandoned the button, which was suddenly behaving like it’d been disconnected, and tried banging on the doors but it seems the rod caught in the door had disabled something. So when this didn’t work either she ignored her own advice and panicked.

She started running up the hallway to their room door, flapping her hands about like a startled duck, unable to form a coherent sentence.

“Emergency!” she blithered. “Emergency!”

“What’s wrong with you?” her husband asked when she rushed into the unit.

“Emergency! Emergency! Elevator…he’s trapped….the rod…sticking…Emergency!”

Naturally, being a take charge sort of bloke, he sized up the problem in a flash.

“What’s happened to my rod?!” he stammered, and rushed out into the hall.

That got her under control again.

“Really?” she said to her husband, following him up the hall. “Your son is trapped in an elevator and your first thought is for your fishing rod?”

They managed, using the sort of brute strength a body can tap into during high duress situations, to pry the doors open and set their loved ones free.

“Mu-uuum,” said their son, as my friend pulled him into a bear hug, “I’m okay.”

And the rod? It wasn’t broken yet.

“It’s fine,” said her husband, clutching it to his chest. Okay, maybe an exaggeration there, but he was checking it over pretty closely. In any case, he didn’t allow them to take it down to the water, figuring they just couldn’t be trusted.

So as the weekend drew to a close, the new fishing rod was still a virgin and was packed carefully into the car for the journey home….

…which just happened to be a bit on the warm side.

“I’ll turn the air con on,” the man of the house said, and proceeded to put all the windows up from the driver’s control panel.

Crunch.

“What was that?” he asked over his shoulder, but he already knew.

His new rod, which was sticking out the back passenger window, had just snapped in two.

This is the actual fishing rod sticking out of the actual elevator at the actual time of the incident. Thankfully someone had the good sense to photograph it 😉

When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’  Facebook Page.

 ’raising a family on little more than laughs’

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