Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.
A fisherman's tale
In my youth, I loved fishing, and so did my neighborhood buddies. We especially liked going to a lake in the mountain near our homes. It was a moderately sized, fairly shallow lake where we could hone our skills as the great fisherman of tiny sunfish.
One day in early spring I went to the lake with my friends Jim and Jeff. We used simple spin casting rods, worms for bait, and red & white plastic floats (dobbers), and would take turns casting our lines out as far as they would go. And occasionally the fish would actually bite!
On one of my casts, my rod felt slightly heavier than normal as I could feel more resistance when I swung my arm forward. As the line extended out, it looked like I had picked up something extra on my hook, perhaps a small tree branch? And the splash was greater than usual. I turned around to see what I might have hooked but didn’t see an obvious tree. Then I noticed that Jim looked different. That’s because I had hooked the eyeglasses off his face, and cast them into the lake!
In a panic, we ran home. I borrowed Jeff’s father’s hip boots, and grabbed some rakes from my garage. We hiked back up to the lake and I waded out into the shallows where I estimated the glasses had landed. The water was less than hip high, but with all of the vegetation on the lake floor I couldn’t see a thing. Damn! I continued to dredge the lake bottom for a long time but kept coming up empty. I eventually admitted defeat and was forced to pull together my limited savings to buy Jim a new pair. Double damn!
Months later, I went back up to the lake. I knew that it frequently dried up by the end of summer and I was dying of curiosity to see if I could find those cursed things. Sure enough, the lake bed was dry, and I was able to walk out without boots. And there they were, crushed and broken. No doubt all of my boot stomping and rake dredging had destroyed a perfectly good pair of specs. I had paid the price for my lapse, but in hindsight was darn lucky. Thank God that fish hook had only caught Jim’s glasses. -Rick M.