Fishy Lies Part 2

“They won’t come this close to shore. They are pretty far out.”

“Come on ma, they can’t hurt you.” I said to her. I was always teasing her about her lack of guts when it comes to animals and things consisting of slime. I had yet to achieve “girly.”

My mother relaxed a bit and we continued our frolic in the waves when all of a sudden about a hundred fish the size of a ruler bombarded our Saturday jaunt. The events that followed, to this day still go through my head in slow motion.

My mother, with a look of disbelief, wrenched free of my father’s grasp, turned, and looking like Richard Pryor from the piranha scene in the movie, “The Toy,” proceeded with Christ-like ability of running On water. The laughter had already taken over our bodies as we watched our poor defenseless mother try and outrun a school of attacking fish running through the waves in a desperate effort to get away from them. She was about a third of the way from shore when my mom suddenly stopped in mid-stride. We stopped with her and watched intently. I will never forget what happened next. My mother stopped, looked down for a brief moment, and grabbed the right leg hole of her one-piece bathing suit. She proceeded with dramatic force to pull her bathing suit up to her throat pulling it away from her body at the same time; exposing lord knows what to god knows whom.

Then it happened…a single fish flopped back into the sea.

We roared with laughter again and my mother let her bathing suit slap back against her leg and just as quickly as she stopped, she started her descent to the sand.

My mother never went back in that water again. It was one of our last times going to Ferry Landing Beach. But it sure was worth it.