People Watching

It was the first time I had ever been on a deep sea fishing boat. I had never been out to sea to catch fish either! It was a new adventure for sure. There were about 20 or 25 people on the fishing trip. Mostly adults, except for my two teenagers two other kids about tween age. It took about an hour or so to get out through the bay onto the sea. There was nothing to see! The fog lay in thick. All we could see was the white grayness of the fog and the dark grayish black of the see.

A woman wearing yellow rain pants hollered out that we could move to the rails along the side of the boat to the spot we wanted to fish from. We were given an enormously long fishing pole with NO bait!! People and poles lined the outlining of the boat, the only spot without a person or a pole was directly over the back of the boat. We let our hooks fall from the tip of our poles when the woman told us to do so. She roamed the width of the boat , back and forth, watching the poles and the people. She was not quite middle aged, her hair was medium mousy brown and curly, face tanned and lined deeply with gold rimmed glasses sitting atop the bridge of her nose. She walked with a wide gait, stood with a wide stance, smoked heavily and spoke with her cigarette poking out one side of her mouth, and NEVER STOPPED SMILING! Whenever any of the poles showed sign of having a fish on the line she excitedly announced to the person, "Fish on!" and waited there till the line was realed in and she would grab the caught fish and reove the hook while congratulating the person and then chuck the fish into a holding bin nearby. I couldn't help but wonder about how many times the woman had been out on the deep sea fishing charter outfitting people with poles and excitedly announcing each fish that was caught. How many times? She must truely love fishing and get excited no matter who caught the fish or she is an extremely gracious woman to be excited for those people, like myself, that perhaps were on this exciting excursion for the first time. As the limits were caught among all the fishermen, the people began to make their way back into the cabin to get comfortable for the journey back to shore. Nearly everyone fell asleep on the journey back. And, nearly everyone, I noticed, had a little round patch behind their ear. Seasickness prevention! And yes, it makes people drowsy. Funny, I thought, we only got drowsy on the way back, after the fishing was done! I sat drowsily observing the fellow fishermen, musing at the number of seasick patches that i did not see on our way out to the fishing spot! My drowsy gaze settle upon the fishermans' host-(ess). She counted the fish in the bins, smiling as she eyeballed the bigger ones! Smoking, walking widely, smoking, smiling. I began to see her story as I watched her attend to her tasks. Rather, I created her back story! It went something like this;

She once live in a big busy city back east perhaps. Yes! Like New York! She probably worked in a big highrise office building, something corporate and stressfull, like Wall street or CEO of a company, or assistanCEO. I imagined that she had decided one day that she had had enough of the stress, the job, the city and decided to find a new way, a new life. So she go into her car and drove as far as she could from her old stressful life and found that little town on the west coast. She got a job on the fishing charter because she loved every element of it. The sea, the freedom of being on the sea, the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, fishing, and fishing for excitement with tourists. Perfect! I guess that is what I would do if I lived in a big city and never saw anything other then cement and asphalt and went from home to a stressful job and back home again. I would get in the car and drive as far as I could away!!! Or maybe my created back story for the fisher lady was merely my own inner psyche expressing my own inner conflict and desire to change or escape my situation at that time.