On a fine summer day a happy
boy crossed a tree-covered road in the country. He was wearing
fine new shoes, and shadows from the Mulberry trees around him
flickered the light in front of his eyes. He was so excited
that he just started running, but with the sunshine covering
and uncovering his eyes over and over again, he couldn't see
the creek ahead! Suddenly he tumbled over the rocks on along
the side of the water, and he fell towards the rushing waters.
But instead of a splash there was a thud. Then a slap, and
then another.
Suddenly, and without any good
reason, the boy became a fish. His nose grew long and his body
got scaley. His hair disappeared and his scales became oily.
Where his arms were, fins grew. Where his feet stood, his tail
fins flicked. The boy became a real fish.
He didn't want to stop being a
boy, and wrestled a lot with suddenly becoming a fish. The
runs up the creek bed didn't seem so inevitable for him, and
the winter's ice didn't make him so cold. Instead, he
floundered and flopped, dove and rose, splished and splashed
all over the place, all of the time. The other fish never
really made friends with him, and the the boy/fish played by
himself. He was happy enough, until one day when everything
changed.
One day a little girl rode her
shiny bicycle slowly towards the water's edge. The boy/fish
had seen her before, always watching her carefully. But this
time she was different: after staring at the water for a
little while the girl stood up. Without looking back, without
thinking twice, she just ran away! The boy waded there for a
minute before noticing the wonderful gift she'd left behind.
There against one of the squatty summertime Mulberry trees was
her bicycle. After looking at it for a few minutes and waiting
for the girl to come back the boy/fish was so excited that all
the sudden he just jumped out of the water and onto the bike!
He was so excited he just started riding, and to this day the
fish in the creek have never seen him again!
However, people say that they
have seen him riding around town. So if you have a minute, go
down to the creek and sit under those broad Mulberry trees
lining the edge, and keep your eye open. You never know when
you might see the bicycling fish.
- From A. Fletcher,
Uncollected Stories
©2008. Landlocked Publishing.
"In your note on my new and
happy marital partnership with David Bale, you credit me with
the witticism 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a
bicycle.' In fact, Irina Dunn, a distinguished Australian
educator, journalist and politician, coined the phrase back in
1970 when she was a student at the University of Sydney. She
paraphrased the philosopher who said, "Man needs God like fish
needs a bicycle." Dunn deserves credit for creating such a
popular and durable spoof of the old idea that women need men
more than vice versa."
