Narrowing the way, or the shad run, whichever you think more important
The American shad is
a pelagic fish, which I understand has nothing to do with the fourth century
heresiarch Pelagius or his denial of the orthodox Christian doctrine of original
sin, a belief that led St. Jerome to call Pelagius an ignorant liar stuffed
with Irish porridge, amongst other negative things, and everything to do with
the American shad’s preference for living in the open sea far from the sight of
land, where calls from telemarketers, bill collectors, and mooching relatives
need never trouble them. Living in the
open sea is a good thing; I’m sure the shad think so or they wouldn’t bother
living there, given the property taxes out in that neck of the woods, but every
year the American shad wearies of this near idyllic existence and gather
together in great schools several hundred thousand strong and then head for the
rivers and estuaries of North America’s eastern coast like so many Rotarians,
Elks, Odd Fellows, or the fraternal organization of your choice going to their
organization’s annual convention in Las Vegas.
The shad head for the East Coast of America for pretty much the same
reason that our Rotarians et al go to Vegas—sex—although the shad make less of
a song and dance about their reasons for heading for shore. The shad, after
all, are not leaving the little lady behind to keep the home fires burning;
nope, the old ball and chain is going with the guys and aims to have just as
much fun whooping it up as they do. There’ll
be no sexual double standards here, thank you very much; this is a Democratic Party stronghold and don't you forget it, buster.
For those of us who
live near a river on the eastern coast of the United States, and yes, this
category includes me, the arrival of the shad is one of the great signs of
spring, along with allergies, baseball season, gnats, and having to do your
income taxes, and no sooner does the shad run commence than the highways and
byways of our happy little burg become lined to the danger point with cars,
vans, pickup trucks, SUVs, and such other conveyances that will hold truly
prodigious amounts of fishing equipment.
This annual invasion of dedicated sportsmen is annoying in the extreme
for those of us who live here, as our Izaak Walton wannabes seldom bother to
look both ways when crossing the streets.
What’s worse, or at least I think so, is that these people apparently believe
that carrying a fishing rod and a tackle box conveys upon them some form of
immunity from the vehicle and traffic laws of the Vampire State as well as an
exemption from the laws of physics. So
if any of you people, and you know who you are, are reading this, please be
aware that waving your fishing rod at my thirteen year old Ford will not stop
the car dead in its tracks; fishing rods are by no stretch of the imagination
magic wands and this trick will no more work with my car than it will with a
locomotive coming down the line. Except,
of course, if I run you down, you know the law says it’s my fault, no matter
how stupid you were, whereas if the train hits you and smears your dumb carcass
over a mile of railroad track scores of people, including me, will read your
obituary and mock you for trying to stop a locomotive with a fishing rod, and
we will be happy that you have chosen to remove yourself from the gene
pool. Greater love hath no man than
this, that he lay down his life to improve the species. It’s a small victory, but they add up, you
know, yes they do.
Arterialscerlosis is
the order of the day on the Internet these days as well and I trust I didn’t hurt
your neck with that segue to another subject, but I cannot help but notice the
increasing narrowing of the information superhighway. For example, whenever I go online I must face
a plethora of ads that promise to teach men fifty years old and over, yet
another category that includes me, unfortunately, Spanish, French, and/or
Italian with one simple trick. I know why
this is happening; I have been going to my local public library and using the
online French language program to teach myself a little bit of the language in
preparation for a proposed expedition to the City of Light later this year. I have not been studying the language
assiduously—I do nothing assiduously, I fear, except whine about my fate to all
and sundry—and I can categorically state that after two and a half hours of not
very intensive study my French is somewhat less good than my Spanish, a
language that I have not been studying assiduously since high school. So I guess there’s hope for me yet. Also, I
am not sure that this trip is even possible at this point, and to paraphrase
Will Rogers, I am wasting no time on a prospect.
In any case, these cyberlinguistic
Burma-Shave signs promising me deliverance from the drudgery of learning French
irregular verb conjugations with one simple trick invariably come with a photo
of an attractive young lady of uncertain national origin whose primary assets
are her nice looks, her nice smile, and her overly impressive bosom, which I do
not understand, since everything about this young lady is designed to make me
forget the various conjugations of avoir (to have) faster than I learned them.
I therefore suspect that she is not the one simple trick the advertisers promise
I can use to unlock my inner Cyrano de Bergerac; if she were, then Hugh Hefner
would, by definition, be able to speak all the living languages of the Earth
and most of the dead ones, including Pictish and Akkadian, high school foreign
language programs would require their students to read Playboy as homework from
one end of this our Great Republic to the other, and Viagra would replace
Ritalin and Prozac as the pedagogical drug of choice in the nation’s schools. That Playboy is not required reading tells me
that learning French and Spanish is more difficult than this one simple trick
can handle and that the purpose of the young lady is to distract my attention
while these jokers loot my checking account.
The thing, of course, is that I’m not fifteen anymore. When I was fifteen this dodge would have
worked in a New York minute; when most of your body weight is testosterone
almost anything sounds sensible if presented in the right package; but a couple
of generations have come and gone since high school, I fear, and most of my
body weight is cholesterol now, a substance not nearly interesting as
testosterone, as I am sure a good many people out there can verify. Avoir, aurai, avais, ayant…I haven’t gotten
the present tense yet, but I’m working on it.
Labels: advertising, cold cuts, excuses, fishing, Internet, Politics, public television, Roberta Vasquez, sex, sexists, shad
