By Barbara Ann Sweeney

   Uncle Tony said that we were going fishing. That was the first bad thing that happened. We’d only been fishing once before, when the local swimming pool replaced the chlorinated water with fresh and, for God-knows-whatever-reason stocked it with trout and lured all of us city kids in to learn the fine art of fishing with the promise of games and prizes. The game I most played was dodging the back end of my brother’s fishing pole, and the prize I earned when I didn’t was a fishhook caught in my hair.

   But Uncle Tony said that we were going fishing. So we went. I only agreed to go after the last debacle in the spirit of not wanting to be a quitter. (This turned out to be a lie. In my life, I have quit many things – marriages, jobs, cities, and in the end…fishing.)

   The second bad thing that happened was that we had to get up at three in the morning and take the bus out to some forest preserve on the edge of civilization. 

   We went fishing. We went fishing in a river, we went fishing in a lake, and we even went fishing on the bad end of a dam. We wandered like minstrels, soaking wet and shivering. 

   Then we got lost.

   That was the third bad thing. 

   Uncle Tony said we weren’t lost, because people can’t get lost when they’re fishing, he said. Cousin Jim started crying. We couldn’t keep up. Uncle Tony and my brother David went ahead of us, far out of sight, along a long and winding road. We followed the airplanes into O’Hare airport, where we caught up.

   Uncle Tony bought us all dinner at Carson’s, with our muddy boots and stinking jeans and our fishing gear propped up against the wall. So much for fishing. We didn’t catch anything.

   I ordered the ribs.