Fishing Dock

When I think of a fishing dock I think of a time when I was maybe six or seven and my dad took my brother and I down to a dock with our little fishing poles to go ‘fishing’. I don’t know if he thought we would catch anything or if he even gave us something to put at the end of our lines.

We weren’t really an outdoorsy family. We stepped outside to play a sport or go some place, but we weren’t the type to be thrilled if we got lost in the middle of nowhere. My parents tried though. Products of a middle class family in the suburbs with easy access to a city and nature. They would occasionally try to culture us with a show, museum, or restaurant in New York and then take us camping with my brother’s boy scout group. From an early age, I knew I was not cut out for the latter.

One time my brother’s friend got a fish hook stuck in his finger and another time it was raining and my kid-sized tent got drenched. Both times I thought, why are we doing this to ourselves? I was all of six. The straw that broke the camel's back was when my mom took me camping with the girl scouts and instead of toilets you had to pee in a hole in the ground. At what point did my mother think I would be cool with this?

Anyhow, I grew up and spent 8 years working in luxury hotels, giving my family really nice discounts and I would ask if they remembered having me sleep in the dirt while we walked through the Ritz Carlton in Kapalua.