If I could find the kid this morning I’d haul him off the bus and take him with today. I’d teach him two things. First I’d teach him to skip daily drudgery often and then I d teach him anything I knew about fishing. His folks wouldn’t be too proud of me, or him, but that kid had the look of boy that will grow to be a fisherman.

I used to sit on the school bus as it rambled down the road dropping us kids off one after another. Day after day in what I considered sitting in a building being stuffy air tortured to death. My enemies, my nemesis’s, elementary school, Jr high and eventually senior high, all those buildings just smelled of sweaty kids. I get nauseous to this day just thinking about it. I think I should have been home schooled after all.

I can hear school teachers, truant officers, and most of the respectable parents chanting to drown out the voice of pied pipers or fishing fanatics like me. To a certain extent I have to agree. You work, you pay your bills, you can afford to buy minnows, and I get the big picture. Its just in the end I don’t wont a priceless wall hanging worth a million when I could have had a lifetime of snapshots that meant more to me.

I am gonna fish today for the little kid still left inside me and the man that little kid on the bus someday must become. We all get older and hopefully smarter. I wish as a kid, I knew then, what I know now. Life is not about hoping for a better tomorrow. Life is about taking care of today. We only get a today, one at time.

Its drives me a bit nuts when I look at my boat and know before I ever get to the lake that the front seat is gonna have no one in it all day. I’d bet a months worth of night crawlers there is at least a handful of kids over at the local high school daydreaming right now about fishing instead of actually paying attention in class. Well at least I hope so.