A catfish and a birthday.

First off, I need to give a birthday shout out to Staci Jo. Jo is so pretty, funny, smart, talented and an amazing sister. I love you poo.
Now, on to the catfish. The weather was beyond beautiful this weekend. Jared and I took full advantage – we went for a bike ride on Friday night, a rollerblade/run on Saturday (I rollerbladed, Jared ran) and had a picnic at a park on the Potomac. You never know what you are going to see hanging out at the parks around here. As we were lounging around after munching down our turkey hoagies, we watched a man reel in a big old catfish from the Potomac. He gingerly set the flopping fish on the grass about five feet from us, causing frenzy with a group of picnickers next to us. Like a wild stampede, and much to the fisherman’s chagrin, the group ran over to the floppy fish to check it out. The fisherman didn’t even have a chance to take the fish off the line before the group had picked it up and started wiggling it in each other’s faces. The fisherman, in his broken English, asked them to stay away from his pole but they continued to invade his space so he gave up and sat down, glaring at the obnoxious group from his picnic table. Eventually, the excitement wore down, and the picnickers went back to kicking their soccer ball around. The fisherman went and unhooked the fish, wrapped it in some old newspaper and set it back on the grass. A few moments later, a hoity toity lady walking by with her hoity toity dog, told the fisherman that he shouldn’t eat the catfish because it’s dirty (duh). She recommended he throw it back in the river before it dies (the catfish was long gone at this point). Totally defeated, the fisherman picked the poor dead catfish and lopped it, newspaper and all, back into the Potomac.
It was a mind boggling situation. I mean, who takes a stranger’s freshly caught catfish and plays with it like it’s their own? And, who tells somebody to throw a fish that is long gone back in the river so it doesn’t die? It’s just scrooey. Tip of the day: don’t ruin a fisherman’s Saturday by messing with his catch of the day. It’s just not cool.