This Post Has Strong Language (sort of)

Given the picture I use as my blogworld identity, it's no secret that I love to fish. I have called myself an angler for as long as I can recall and I have many fond memories of fishing as a boy mostly with my grandfather. One particular thing I always enjoyed was stopping at the bait shop.

Sure the places smelled, but my fascination with the tanks, the racks of lures, and the old men who ran the joints could not be deterred. Slimy waterdogs with their gaping mouth and long tails. Big fat Canadian nightcrawlers squirming in their boxes. The teaming mass of minnows flashing back and forth in their watery holding tanks. I checked them all out but my favorite was when the man in charge would grab his net and catch the minnows.

In one dip he might catch a dozen or more. Their little silver bodies would glisten as they flapped around desperate to escape and get back in the refreshing water where they could breathe.

This weekend, while sitting waiting at the local emergency room with my mom I thought about those minnows when I realized the ER was the human equivalent.

Captured by illness or injury, the mass of people sat in their chairs squirming, eyeing both the freedom beyond the plate glass windows and the hope of relief behind the double swinging doors.

Okay maybe the whole minnow thing is a stretch, but the place smelled like fish, there were plenty of interesting old men, a few individual with more dirt on them than a worm, and I saw kids slink around like waterdogs on the nasty floor.

The writer in me took plenty of notes for future fodder, but my favorite was the man the police brought in. We'd already been there a good four hours and therefore had landed in a room in the back. I room right next to the security room where the Amarillo Police bring their sick or injured.

The man they brought in was a very short, maybe 5 foot four Hispanic fellow in hi mid to late thirties. He had on a plush Mr. Rogers type of sweater and had a short almost wavy hair style. He also screamed nonstop for three hours beginning from the moment he arrived. No, not screams of pain, but rather screams of agitation. he started in Spanish and about every third word I recognized because it was a curse word. Then he would alternate from what sounded like an African chant to cursing in English. The funny thing was he has a heavy accent except when he screamed the F word or a few other selected curses. GD rang loud, clear and well articulated but when describing a feline the man would say POOH (as in Winnie) and SAY for that last syllable.

When calling the policeman the ugly equivalent of a roosterfish, (For those of you who need help with this game roosters are sometimes called cocks and suckers are a kind of fish) he pronunciated very well, but others epitaphs came out wrong. Sook, Deak, Beesh. And I'm still unsure waht Moombaba Bogga was suppsoed to be.

After three hours of this I couldn't help but laugh and now I have this strange desire to see that old movie, Johnny Dangerously.

For the record my mom is scheduled to have gallbladder surgery later today, but she already has gained some relief from a stint they put in due to a large stone. I don't know what happened to the screaming man, but I assume he went to jail once the doctors checked him out.