the country we inhabited

My father took me fishing the day after I barely graduated from high school.

I didn’t really like to fish, but I had nothing else to do, so I figured, what the hell?

The problem was as soon as we cast our rods, he said, “So what are your plans?”

This was a question I wasn’t interested in answering at that point in my life.

So I didn’t, which really pissed him off.

“Well?” he said.

 “Gimme a break, Dad…”

 That was all he needed to hear.

 “Give you a break?”

“Yeah…”

“Mmh. That was the wrong thing to say to me… that was the wrong thing to say to me…”

And then he launched into one of the longest speeches I’ve ever heard him or any other parent give.

It must have gone on for at least half an hour.

I was kind of glad I’d forgotten my watch because otherwise, I would have kept checking it every two minutes, wondering how much longer he was going to keep lecturing me, and that would have really pissed him off.

So I just looked straight ahead and pretended to give a damn about fishing.

Somewhere around the three-quarter mark of his speech, right after he’d finished listing all the sacrifices he and my mother had made for me over the last God-knows-how-many years, I felt a little tug on my fishing line.

“I think I got something,” I said, but my father didn’t hear me.

He was rambling on, and on about how important it is to set goals and make plans for the future because before I’d know it, I’d be forty, and I’d probably be filled with all kinds of regrets and disappointments and by then, it would be too late and…

Christ, I get so tired whenever somebody lectures me.

I literally get sleepy and want to take a nap.

I sometimes think when people are lecturing you, they’re really lecturing themselves.

I can’t prove that theory because I’m not a psychologist, but it’s just something I’ve always thought.

Anyway, I was trying to focus on reeling in whatever I’d hooked, which didn’t seem special.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t putting up much of a fight.

“You know, the reality is,” my father continued. “you won’t have any idea of anything I’m saying until you have kids of your own… and at the rate you’re going, I don’t even see that happening…not unless you stop cockin’ around, which I don’t see happening either. I could be wrong; I hope I am.”

Yada yada yada…

Well, turns out I didn’t hook a fish at all.

“Looks like a bustier,” my father said, examining it.

“A what?” I said.

“It’s a woman’s…”

That’s as far as his explanation went.

“It’s like underwear?” I said.

“Something like that…”

I didn’t push it.

He didn’t want to discuss it in detail.

Which was fine with me.

I think it would have been awkward as hell talking to my father about bustiers, anyway.

I don’t even think I could talk to him about my underwear.

That’s how screwed-up our relationship was back then.

Okay, well, “screwed up” might be a little intense.

If I can think of a better way to describe the relationship between my father and me at that time, I’ll let you know.

 Until then, I’m not going to spend much time on it.

 I’ve got more important things to do.

 Like trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to spend the next forty years of my life.