What is it about men and fishing? Can you tell me?

This winter we're in a fishing village off the coast of Florida. All the folks in this area seem to be from Michigan and they're either related or neighbors of each other up north. They're all retired and living a great life.

The guy next door is the epitome of the "Fisherman". He's got a boat(a very nice Boston Whaler), a bunch of fishing poles, some pretty heavy duty knives, and an assortment of fishing gear,(I still don't know what some of it is, and I was a buyer of fishing accessories in a former life). He has a fishing table in the back yard of his trailer next to the canal. The table is to clean the tons of fish he catches, and the birds love it as well. When he's out there with the fish he's caught, the birds are there with him, cheering him on, because they know when they see a good easy meal coming their way.

This guy fishes nearly every day. He loves to be outside doing whatever the season says he should be doing: fishing, hunting or anything else he can do outside. The guy has a number of very old friends (or relatives) who love to fish as well, so they leave early in the morning with all their "stuff" to do their fishing. The wives (the smart ones) stay home keeping the home fires burning...

Now, here's the rub. Most of the guys around here are old...I mean really old. The neighbor and his most recent fishing buddy have defibrillators inserted under the skin in their chests. The neighbor had his put in last month after his 7Th heart attack. His pal? He's had his for 6 months. They take off in the morning to fish. They're both highly intelligent men, but neither one knows how to use a cell phone.. Oh, they have them, but they don't turn them on, but honestly even if they were on, they don't know how to open them to talk. They both have hearing loss, so whoever was trying to call them hasn't got a prayer of getting them on the cell phones. If, the operative word being "if" here, they had the cell phones on, it's debatable whether or not they could hear them ring. Even if they did hear them ring, it's questionable if they would know how to open them, then they more than likely wouldn't be able to hear who was calling them anyway. It's a riot.

They came home late yesterday and the wives were understandably worried. Both wives knew the guys didn't have the cell phones, since the phones were still in the houses. Finally one and a half hours later than expected they come home with their little boat. In the boat, with them, was a live shark... Yes, I said "live".

The shark had half it's guts out of it's body, but it was still thrashing. The neighborhood came around to see this thing because it was big, over 6'4". It was looking at everyone with it's clouded eyes. Larry, my husband, got down on his haunches to look at the thing "up close and personal". As he was getting into a better position to get a good look at the thing, the shark flopped around to get a better view of Larry. The shark was trying to get a little nip of Larry. Larry jumped straight up in the air, far away from the jaws of, "Jaws". I nearly peed my pants, so did Larry.

The old guys, Larry included, continued to battle with, "the shark that wouldn't die" for about 10 minutes. No one was willing to take a chance with this thing. When the old guys caught the thing it took them more than 1/2 hour to land it. They thought it was dead, dragged it into the boat but apparently it was only resting, because the fight continued in the boat as they were hauling ass to get home. I don't know who they were more afraid of by that time, the shark or their wives because they were late.

The whole fiasco in back of our trailer houses took about 3 hours to play out. The guys, Larry too, were all gleeful at the Man vs. shark entertainment. It was pretty entertaining, even for me.