"Plan to smack him around when you're ready."
-Heartcutter
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| English Paper | | | Author: | | | IP: | user-2ivXXXX | | Date: | 04/09/00 09:04 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 7, Min: 5
Lifetime Rating for Spice: 6.0000 |   |
I have been working on an English paper for two week (what that means is the evening before the rough draft was due and the evening before teh final). The assignment was to describe a moment when you learned something. We had just finished readin Frankenstein and one of the big topics in the book was how the creature learned everything. So, naturally, we were supposed to think about the same thing in our life. After going through five different way my grandfather tought me to fish, I came up with this, hope you like it:
My Mentor
With a relaxed motion, as if sweeping the dust off a table, grandfather swung the fishing tackle around, launching the hook along with the bait into the water away from the boat. He started retrieving the line by carefully turning the handle on his tackle, making the plastic worm wiggle around in the water. Suddenly the end of the tackle jerked forward.
“You got it, grandpa! You got it” I pointed at the place in the water where the hook floated just a second ago.
Opening his mouth slightly and leaning forward, trying to discern what it was that grabbed the bait in the dirty-green waters of the pond, grandfather quickly rolled up the sting, and I saw the fish. It twisted its smooth, bullet-shaped body with great, yet futile, fervor, trying to get off the hook that pierced it lower lip. Its eyes rolled half way out of the sockets, staring at us in senseless horror. The mouth opened and closed, as the gills flapped convulsively like wings of a canary. Slowly, the fish’s struggling ceased. Its mouth opened for the last time, and it froze with expressionless eyes wide open; the horror dispersed, as the life left the body.
The fish had stopped moving, but I kept staring at it, unable to turn away. To teach a ten-year-old kid to fish, many of these creatures would have to die, and before me was the first victim. Never before had I seen a living thing struggle for its existence in real life, and seeing it for the first time made me glad I had not and made me wish that I may never again have to. I raised my hand to touch it, hesitated, and turned away, ashamed.
“That’s how it’s done, Kirill,” grandfather’s voice knocked my out of my meditation, “As soon as you feel it took the bait, get it out of the water as soon as you can and remember to keep your hands still.”
* * *
I glide through the water swiftly and easily. I have not eaten for two days, and my senses are at their peak, as I look around for a meal. Dark-green delicious-looking slime covers all the rocks around me, but in this time of year it provides no nourishment. In the corner of my eye I see splashing on the surface of the water. Whatever it is, it better be edible. I flex but keep on swimming not to scare my prey. Slowly I rotate my head to the left, and soon am able to discern the creature. A worm! Huge, juicy, gliding along the surface of the water. I whip my tail and in no time the my lips close around my victim. Sharp pain cuts through the bottom of my mouth. I jerk to the right, but the thing in my lip pulls me with irresistible force. The fishermen!
Powerful force yanks me out of the water. I can’t breathe. I flap my gills and twist in agony in the last violent attempt to get off the hook. My eyes wander around, as my head flies back and forth driven by the thrusts of the body. Suddenly a child’s face passes in front of my eyes. He stares at me, but his eyelids tremble. I freeze in astonishment and, overcoming the unbearable pain in my chest, look at him with my eyes wide open. A tear accumulates in the corner of his eye and runs down the side of his cheek. He slowly stretches his hand towards me, but when it is about to touch me, the trembling of the eyelids turns more frequent, the hand jerks back, and the face turns away with a sob.
As if from miles away I hear a voice: “That’s how it’s done, Kirill.” Yet I know that this child will never again stalk fish in his silent boat. He has learned that he cannot bear to take a life. I only wish it were not at the cost of mine.
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