Fishing for Compliments

 

guddle (Scottish) - to fish with one's hands by groping under the stones or banks of streams (Lexico.com)

Yesterday, my daughter and I found ourselves on Long Beach Island, a thin, twenty-mile barrier between the ocean and mainland just north of Atlantic City where the finest sand and salt water can be found in all of New Jersey. It used to be considered quite a find, but unfortunately, since Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley bought and sold a residence there sometime during their short marriage, the entire world knows of its existence and has probably visited the destination at one time or the other. However, in October, the population of summer residents and tourists is reduced considerably, and you can find just about no one on the beaches. 

My daughter, who is training for the New York Marathon in November, decided to run the length of the island while I visited prominent zoologist friends just shy of Barnegat Light for a few hours. As my friend and I were strolling on the sand, littered with clam and oyster shells that nearly camouflaged scurrying sand pipers avoiding the incoming tides, we came across two young men who were not guddling, but probably doing the modern day equivalent: fishing with poles. Before our eyes, one of them caught a baby shark, which he wound up tossing back into the water, a motion I figured was close enough to guddling, today's choice of weird or infrequently used English words. 

As my friend and I continued to head north, I marveled that even in the present, there are still some who prefer to hold onto traditions of the past. These two guys were of the age at which they could have easily spent the afternoon engaged in computer gaming or even glued to the Giants vs. the Rams on TV, but no, their preference was to while away the day surfcasting into the wind, practically alone. Little did they know that they were fishing for compliments, ours, their hooks latching onto them and not letting go. I thought to myself that in other places of the globe, there were probably adolescents just like them, doing the same thing and getting the same results. And I was glad, glad that humans are still capable of stopping time through simplification, finding solace via the ordinary and extraordinary at once. Maybe there is hope for the human race after all :). 

Bravo to the indefatigable few who perpetuate something real! 

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