Weather

I'm going to break with man-code for a moment, and suggest that most men will never mature mentally or emotionally past the age of eighteen. Our bodies continue to grow, often in ways we do not like, but our minds are stunted. Bear with me for a moment.

My 60 year-old father has difficulty looking women in the face. The problem is that he's a dedicated boob-guy. The age or attractiveness of the woman is of little significance, only the boobs. As far as my dad is concerned, no two boobs are quite the same. Each and every boob demands our attention, respect and admiration. Boobs are mysterious. Boobs are wonderous. Some boobs are magnificent, while still others demand offerings of fruit and incense. It's not so much that he's staring at your chest ladies, he's paying homage to the female form. He's acting on deep seated, primal instinct.

I must admit that I do not understand my father's obsession. Maybe its because I've watched my wife breastfeed our children. Ouch. Maybe its because I'm too disconnected from my own nipples to find other nipples fascinating. Perhaps it's because I'm a leg man. Let's face it, nice legs are the proverbial rainbow at the end of which one might find a pot of gold. Dear God help me.

My point is this. At 60 and 35 respectively, and regardless of our disparate perversions, my father and I are much the same in that we both behave like adolescents. For both of us, the processes involved in maturation ended somewhere around our senior years in high school.

What has this to do with anything? More to the point, what has this to do with the weather, as this entry is entitled? Only this.

I am a 35 year-old man. I am a husband, a father, and a teacher. As a teacher I spend the better part of every winter evening praying for a snow day come dawn. Snow days are free days, compensated time away from the classroom. It doesn't matter if I have two feet of snow to shovel. It doesn't matter if I'm left home alone to care for the triplets. I'm not at work. I've a snow day, a glorious snow day.

Herein lies the connection to my father's boob fetish. Like boobs, the weather can force men to behave like children. I'm a 35 year-old man sitting on the couch with my pajamas turned inside-out, riveted to a perfectly coiffed weatherman as he speaks of lake effect snow and a "difficult commute in the morning." Snow day baby, snow day.

So it is with fishing. Come the last week of March, I am suddenly and acutely aware of the impact of the weather on my environment. Rain, not unlike the deluge we received this morning, will likely send the main river over its banks. A heavy storm will bring fish into the tributaries. Too heavy a storm, however, will make unfishable all but the smallest ditch. The devil is in the details or in this case just a few cubic feet per second. I sit on the couch, my waders turned inside out, waiting and hoping for fair weather come the opener.

- Mike