Flat Stanley

My nephew has a school project that he's asked me to participate. The idea is for the class is to have a friend or a relative take Flat Stanley around town and photograph him so that Flat Stanley travels the world.

Something fell on Stanley and flattened him. The kids colored their individual Flat Stanleys.

Well, I'm busy right now.

And I haven't had time to walk down to the capitol, civic center, library and museum. Although I will. For now I'll take Flat Stanley on chores and the like.

I told my nephew that my neighbors stopped in on their way to the park to fly a kite. I suggested they go fly a kite with Flat Stanley. So they did.

It looks like Flat Stanley is doing a wee.

Flat Stanley at Golden Triangle Auto.

The guy in the background is talking to an older guy in a chair. The older guy in the chair showed me a picture of a fish that he caught. A real-life river monster. It is a beautifully colored salmon. 

See the fish trophies on his wall? "Those fish are huge." I never caught such a large fish.

"Oh, those are small." (They are large.)

That's where he got up to brag about the beautiful monster fish that he caught. It really is something to brag about. It is huge. Large as himself, nearly. 

"Did you eat it?"

He couldn't quite believe I just asked that, "No." His visage expressed disgust.

"Why not?" 

"I never eat them. They're too precious. I wouldn't think of it." 

"My friend caught the biggest fish I ever saw and that thing fed fifteen people. And it was delicious." 

"Those things have to be stocked." 

"Well, get to stocking. That's what stocking is for." 

"I don't even want to have this conversation." 

"Oh. You just want to drag them around by the mouth and yank them out of their element. For bragging rights." 

The tall young man behind the counter that day who helped me choose my tires, not this guy,  winced, a bit shocked, that a customer was talking to his contrarian boss that way. 

But uckimfay. I can't believe people put fish through so much trauma and don't even eat them.

(I keep thinking the fish gives up its ghost. It submits to death. And the fisherman is all, psych! I just wanted to rip up your mouth, drag you around painfully so your fight hurts your mouth even more, and freak you out about being pulled out of the water and become somebody's dinner.)

I told him my dad worked on a radar site on an Alaskan island near Russia for a few months, probably Attu but I wasn't sure, and had salmon too many times and thereafter couldn't stand the thought of it. 

"That same thing happened to me." 

Turns out, during a period, he had salmon three times a day and that put him off salmon permanently.

Such a shame, because salmon is excellent.