Oh Please Bring Back My Boron to Me

Some recent Internet research turned up a story about an angler who, when he was much younger, lucked out by finding what was considered the holy grail of fishing tackle at the time--a boron rod at a ridiculously low price. He found the rod at a store that was about to go out of business.

"To this day," he said, "I am giddy over that purchase. Why shouldn't I be? I got a Rolls Royce for the price of a bicycle. Boron rods, at the time, were 'members only' jackets of the fishing world."

Best of all, that rod caught the angler a lot of fish. "Sometimes, I wondered if the rod was even crafted by human hands at all," he noted. "Perhaps it was left by aliens who were watching from afar, conducting a bizarre experiment to see how a bumbling human would react to their advanced technology. In retrospect, I wonder if it could have shot lasers or somehow transported fish out of the water into my waiting hands, if only I had been smart enough to figure out how to harness its full potential."

The angler truly cherished that rod as though it was his only child. He even polished off his fingerprints after every outing, and he never let anyone else touch it--until, that is, the day he met a girl whom he was crazy about. She, too, liked to fish, and he decided she was the only human on the planet worthy of sharing a trip that included his precious magical fishing wand. This was the perfect storm: The girl of his dreams, along with the rod of his dreams, on the same fishing trip. He wondered if the rod's powers and luck maybe would extend beyond the realm of fishing.

That special day started perfectly. They reeled in one big fish after another, admired each one briefly, then released it. In his delirium, though, the young angler did the unthinkable. He let the girl of his dreams use the boron rod, and she proceeded to catch a fish--the biggest one of her life, as it turned out. Wanting to celebrate the moment, she offered to go to a store and buy a couple of cold beverages. He stopped her, though, saying he wanted to pay for the drinks.

Laying down the boron rod, he took out his wallet, handed her some money, then smiled at her, as she got into the car, turned it around, and headed for the store. Too late, he realized what was about to happen. He only could watch, seemingly in slow motion, as she ran over his precious boron rod. "Noooooo!" he wailed pathetically...loud enough to be heard in the next county.

Not knowing what she had done and probably more than a little freaked out by hearing a grown man scream like that, she slammed the car in reverse and started backing toward him at the speed of sound--backing squarely over the boron rod a second time!

The young angler just fell to the ground beside the shattered rod...and dreams...lamenting this horrible, sadistic twist of fate. "Why couldn't she just have run over me instead?" he wondered. "It was all over. The mojo was gone. I just knew I never would catch another fish again. I never had felt such rage and betrayal.

"This woman deserved a fate worse than death. There was no choice. She HAD to be punished for committing this unspeakable act...so I married her. She has been paying for that rod for the last 25 years...and neither one of us could be happier about it."