A Fishy Story

The older your kids get, the more opportunities they have to publicly "out" you for your parenting fails. For us, one of those moments came during an evening library storytime last winter.

The monthly "Pajamarama" attracts whole families. Both moms and dads stand around the perimeter of the storytime room while our pajama-clad kids cluster in front of the librarian, sitting Indian-style on the floor, listening to stories and joining in sing-alongs.

This night in particular, a great time was being had by all... until the librarian launched into a peppy little day-of-the-week ditty about what's for dinner. For each day, she slapped a different felt cut-out of the night's meal on a giant felt board. All was going smoothly for Monday (roast beef), Tuesday (soup), Wednesday (chicken), and Thursday (spaghetti). Then Friday (fish!) came along, and the librarian slapped a giant felt golfdish on her board.

While all the other kids in the room seemed to take this staple in stride, Joey emitted an outrageously loud guffaw, turned to his neighbor on the left, turned to his neighbor on the right -- definitely looking for affirmation that this was completely absurd --  and squealed, "FISH??? FOR DINNER!!??"

Let's just say he was not using his quiet voice, and I may or may not have totally disowned him, and/or waited until the very last parent filtered out of the room at the end of the evening before collecting my non-fish-eating child. From that moment on, I vowed that we would move beyond fish sticks and shrimp ("shrimpy chicken" in our house), and start sampling some fishier fare at our family dinner table.

One of our latest adventures in Tahoe inched us closer to this goal. We not only got up close and personal with live fish, but we grilled it up to eat later that night. Who knew that the Tahoe Trout Farm has been around for more than 30 years, on a side street just off Highway 50 in South Shore? Sign us up!

Their approach was both simple and ruthless: They offered us two fishing poles and bait, directed us to a pond teeming with trout, and also equipped us with a piece of burlap cloth and a lead pipe. Apparently, their "humane" approach to fishing requires fishermen to sieze their freshly caught fish, throw his flailing body on a stump, cover him with burlap, and club him to death with the lead pipe. (Clue? anyone?)

Despite seeing the fish emerge from the water, squirm around desperately on the sand, then get beaten to death in front of their very eyes (in fact, they both wanted to help!), both Joey and Clara had no problem eating our catch for dinner that night.

Mission accomplished!

A man and his son headed to the pond (note the burlap cloth hanging over the pail)

Pulling in the first catch of the day!

Victorious!

  

Clara catches a fish, and then immediately flees the scene in terror.

Here she is watching the killing from a safe distance.

Even Molly got in on the action!

Joey's mood during this whole adventure can best be summed up with the next two pictures, but his heartless, victorious cackles in the video are absolutely priceless, and leave not a shadow of a doubt: He will never be a vegetarian.

Thanks to Uncle Kyle for getting 'er done: removing the flailing fish from the hook, helping with the killing (Tim did disturbingly well at this, too), and grilling the fish up that night!