Today I walked past a guy who said he caught 20 fish here yesterday. He was sitting in the grass along the shore fishing with his wife, and he was hooked up to an oxygen tank, likely for congestive heart failure. Fishing is a good way to spend your days in my opinion, whether they’re your first, middle, or last days.
It turns out, he said, that I need to use these tiny red worms, not nightcrawlers, even though stores sell crawlers. Who knew? At Walmart when I picked up my license, I asked the sporting goods guy what to use around here, and he said crawlers should work, but I should have known not to trust him. I’d purchased a 7-day fishing license, which expired today at noon, and when I did he asked me the day’s date. Then he asked me what time it should start, and I’d said “noon tomorrow,” and he’d said, “But what time?”
So either noon means “anytime in the afternoon” here, or he just didn’t know what noon meant.
I asked him, “Does noon not mean 12 in the afternoon here?” And he said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t really pay attention to time. Unless it’s the time I get off work.”
I pressed him. “So you don’t pay attention to the passage of time, or the overall concept of time, or just the specific time it might happen to be during any given 24-hour period?”
“Just the work times,” he said. I left it alone then, but I bet he didn’t know shit about worms either, which is why I’m not catching any fucking fish. Because the Walmart sporting goods store guy doesn’t believe in time.
Today I was really busy at work and then got a huge assignment dropped on me, a series of written and video features about sustainability in the areas of food, energy, technology, and water. Plus two unrelated videos due this month. So I am going to be busy for the next month solid, and while that will stress me out to some extent I love the topic and I know I’ll feel good learning about it, talking to researchers, and the accomplishment of bringing those stories to life.
I think tomorrow I’ll go get a 3-day license and give fishing another try now that I know the secret. I have spent a small fortune on fishing licenses on this trip.
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