I have a friend named Christian Schultz. We met playing sports together when we were very young. He was an accomplished wrestler and an excellent football player. After middle school Christian went on a little bit of a turn and stopped playing sports. He became a pure epicurean; doing whatever was pleasurable at any time. Very loud and disruptive and goofy. As we got older Christian moved to be more of a loner in high school but we remained close friends. He was a part of a friend circle that always went to “Ernie’s” to hangout and have good time. Ernie was what Christian’s close friends called him because his middle name is Ernest.
So, one day after school me and some friends went to Ernie’s to hangout and go fish. I personally wouldn’t be able to catch a fish even if it was laying on the ground in front of me. My enthusiasm towards this fishing trip matched my skill level: very low. My friend Clint, who was coming fishing, ensured me “You will catch something.” We arrive at Ernie’s house. His house is a large plot of land in the middle of nowhere, and that description pretty much sums the entire state of Oklahoma, where we all lived. A giant plot of land in the middle of nowhere. We find Ernie on a tractor with no shirt on and burnt to a crisp. Now the funny thing about Ernie is that you are probably thinking he and his family are backwoods hicks, well his dad is an investment banker from Chicago and his mom is lawyer for the United States Air Force. He hops off the tractor and takes us to the fishing spot.
We walked down to Ernie’s pond. Now Ernie’s pond is as whacky and odd as Ernie himself. The pond has an old decrepit dock, if you want to call it that, that I was not sure if its stilts were connected to anything or if the old thing was just a collection of tree branches that piled up to form a walkway: hard to tell. In addition to the pile of wood that was previously referred to as a “dock”, there is bob wire that is strung through the middle of the pond because of a property dispute years back. So, we fish for what seems like hours but is really ten minutes and I still haven’t caught anything. I declare that my fishing spot is bad and I move to place near the pile of wood. I send out an incredible cast that wraps around the bob wire not once, not twice, but three times. I insist we cut the line but Ernie says he can untangle it by getting on the dock. I look at him like he is a maniac but he says “I do this all the time.” I know he is lying because he is the clumsiest heaviest footed person I know.
Ernie walks on to the dock like a madman just trotting along like this thing he is walking on is not suffering from every form of rot imaginable. As he walks across, the dock makes noises I didn’t know wood could make. Somehow, he gets to the end not phased at all by the unsteadiness of the dock. Ernie unravels the line and looks back with an arrogant smile. He says “I told you”, as he begins to walk back with my line. The first step he takes toward shore is the beginning of the end for Ernie’s dryness and arrogance. His leg smashes right through the board which renders him into a free fall, face first into the dock. His face smashes into the termite riddled and black rot infected dock with enough force to completely crash the dock down on top of him. Ernie’s fall gave my pole quite the tug and he emerged from the water spewing all sorts of profanity and algae. He swam to shore with the hook stuck in his hand and I looked toward Clint and said “I guess you were right.”
Wrote a story today because of the boredom of the market... Enjoy and tell me what you think 🙂
