Pilly's opening statement.

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? But it's not, I like to write a little humor, and I want the friends who read me to be able to find me, so I thought this looked better than myspace, which no one could ever find.

I'm importing a post from that blog for the first one here on account of I am very lazy and also not feeling all that funny. So here's Pilly's fish story:

Fishing Category: Life
I think that today I will have that disease that you can only get if you have been bitten by the African tse-tse fly. It's way more exotic than that UTI I just recovered from, and since I have been walking that path the village lightly calls a walking trail and the rest of us know as that old road that runs through the slough, I have enough insect bites to back up my claim.

No, the deet doesn't help and yes I have heard of bug repellent. In fact I'm something of an expert on bug repellent. Remember that guy on the old Off! Commercials who dared to stick his arm in an aquarium full of hungry mosquitos?

Well, he was a pansy

.I have personally taken up to eight grandchildren fishing at the Voila National Mosquito Breeding Grounds (hereafter referred to as Lover's lane) and let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing I don't know about bug repellent.

Avon lied about skin-so-soft, just so you know.

Just for your edification, if you are going to take people six and under fishing, don't let anybody have a hook. They're not going to catch any fish, anyway, so hooks are completely unnecessary and only useful for getting grandpa to the emergency room to have one removed from his butt.

It's fun and all, but you probably don't want your grandchildren exposed to that kind of language.

Also, the emergency room takes a dim view of having the hook removal becoming a field trip for little people who want to line up alongside the bed and give the doctor advice as to how to proceed.

Then there is the fistfight that's going to break out when you're back at the slough over who gets the "cool" fishing pole.

No matter how many fishing poles you have, only one is cool. It is always in the hands of Someone Else and can only be fairly taken through war

.Fishline can be a deadly weapon, replace it with red yarn. Yes I know how well that works in the fishing reel. Use an old reel. No sane person gives a good reel to a child under any circumstances whatsoever.

They don't have hooks, they don't need line, the fish heard the noise and have all gone upriver to La Farge. You're not there to catch fish.

At some point at least two kids will fall in the slough. The green stuff is duckweed, don't panic, it won't hurt you. The mud really is mud, however, and may contain leeches and other unpleasant things.After all, the Viola sewege treatment plant is on that road, too, but far be it from me to suggest that might be a bad idea.

Remember to add some bleach (Just a VERY LITTLE) to the bath water, you'll probably be okay

.Kids like mud, also duckweed, eventually everyone will probably "fall in" the slough. Bring towels. A sedative for grandpa won't hurt, either. I highly recommend whiskey, but valium will do if that's all you have.

Then there is the picnic, no one can go fishing without a few sandwiches. It might be a national law, I'm not sure, but in any case you should always bring sandwiches.

Bologna is nice. Peanut butter and Jelly should be called fly bait and left at home.

A good bologna sandwich and a juice box, a couple of apples that no one will eat but everyone will use for ammunition, and some cookies and you've got yourself a first rate, sloughside picnic.

Whatever you may have heard to the contrary dirt will not hurt children, not even if they accidentally eat some. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a rite of passage.

Be sure that you know what things like poison ivy look like in the wild, also explore the pictures of poison oak, poison sumac and poison parsnip. A short course in edible weeds is handy, too. Never administer syrup of ipecac until AFTER you call the poison control center.

Grandpa will not appreciate the second trip to the emergency room to explain to the nice medical personnel how he got the syrup of ipecac even though he wasn't the person eating the weeds. Just never mind how I know that, you can take my word for it. I'm very honest. Really.

Leave the dog home. Especially if she is ninety six in dog years, somewhat deaf and possibly senile. It will not signifigantly improve her life to be thrown repeatedly in the slough while someone shrieks, "Puppy like a SWIM!" at the top of their lungs.

I can guarantee you that the one thing Puppy doesn't like is "a swimmin'". Puppy gets cranky and bites people, puppy doesn't even like a bath.

Your baby brother also doesn't like a swim, but someone is (usually) watching him a little closer than the dog.

So, anyway, a nice trip to MacDonald's after a day of fishing is a good way to round off the experience. Yes, it is fourteen miles the other direction from home, but no self-respecting grandparent will care about that.

Be sure to go in the place to eat, there is nothing that will brighten up the day of the people who work at MacDonald's like eight children under the age of six all eating a happy meal under the table while covered in duckweed and slough mud.

Also, your children get a little wild when they discover everyone they go to church with was a witness to that. It's good for them. Takes the pretension right out of them, believe me.

Then give them all back to their parents--after assuring them that their dad never went to bed before midnight when he was eight--and go home for a nice nap before dinner.

Ah, grandparenting. Who could ask for anything more?


To those of you who so kindly e-mail me in horror about some of the events in my life, please let me reassure you that all Pilly Stories are BASED ON actual events. That means the source of my inspiriation is triggered by a real event, and it's not that the truth isn't in me, it's just that any story teller will tell you we are born with the inability to tell any story without improving on it some.