In attempt to dispel those pre-finals pressures, I embarked on an adventure last weekend. My friends introduced me to a new sport. This sport is not highly active like football or basketball, nor is it a sport that involves brain activity, like chess. My sport involves no brain work (and no brain for that matter) and makes absolutely no physical demands on its participants. Yes, my friends, last weekend I went fishing.

My fun-filled day began at 5 a.m. As a rule, I don't consider any activity fun if I am required to be up before the sun. However, my friends drilled me earlier that the middle of the night is the best time to catch fish, so I got up at five in the morning went along with their plan. Yet, for the entire duration of the ride up to the lake, I pondered this issue: Do fish sleep? Do early morning fishermen depend on the fact that since the fish just woke up they will still be groggy and be fooled into biting on the bait? Or maybe we are trying to catch the fish off guard. After all, what fish in his right mind would believe that people would be up at such insane hours just to catch him? I voiced my opinions from the back seat of the car, but my friends just told me to shut up and quit complaining.

After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at our destination. Trying to ease the tension in the air, I mentioned that our lake was so dirty that it looked like those Alaskan Exxon photos. No one else found my joke very funny.

Recovering from my bombed joke, I rushed out of the car, ready to start this fishing thing, when I was stopped and chastised by my friends. Oh, what a naive fisherwoman I was! I had not come properly attired for our little exertion. I was assured that every fishermen must wear those silly hats and vests with tackle all over them. I refused the vest, but since I had no time to do my hair that morning (due to our early departure time), I agreed to the hat. While the hat did keep the sun out of my eyes, when it finally did come up, I have to go public and say that I did not use any of the tackle on the hat for the entire fishing expedition. Did I make a huge faux pas or is the tackle just ornaments? 'Cause if I screwed up, boy, do I feel silly, but if that tackle really is just accessories, all fishermen need to have their head examined. ASAP.

Finally, we made it on to the boat. We were sittin' there for a while, you know, fishing. After about 15 minutes, I started to get bored. I try to strike up a conversation with my friends only to be quickly silenced. I figured they were still mad about all the wise cracks I made, so I bade my time and waited. After another hour I knew that if no one started a conversation, I would go crazy. All we were doing was sitting in a boat, looking at the water and that's it. I tried the conversation attempt once more, but my friends told me that I needed to be quiet. I was scaring the fish. Fish?!? What about my needs here? I thought this was supposed to be fun, but instead it was the silent treatment. I sat there, quietly, for the remainder of the fishing trip cursing myself, silently, about wasting a perfectly good Saturday on this poor excuse of a sport.

About six hours later, my friends finally consented to leave Lake There-Ain't-No-Fish-Here-Buddy. As you can probably imagine, none of my friends found this joke funny either. We were mighty embarrassed to come home empty-handed to our friends who had the good sense to stay behind, sleep in, and realize that this fishing thing is just plain silly.

The moral of this story (yes, there was a purpose to all this) is to alert everyone out there: if your friends want you to engage in an activity that requires you to wake up early, wear funny paraphernalia and remain absolutely silent, tell them to go fishing on their own and participate in a sport that offers more excitement, such as writing a thesis paper or doing your laundry. However, to those select few who actually enjoy this sport, in the immortal words of Primus Ä fish on!

Hilla Yaniv is a communication and journalism sophomore. Read Next Article