When
my brother and I watched Napoleon Dynamite for the first time we
laughed so hard we could barley breathe. Our wives were looking at us
like we were partially retarded but that was probably because they
had never known my friend Mark. Almost all of Napoleon's mannerisms
and affectations could have been lifted whole cloth from the life of
my longtime best friend and next door neighbor Mark. His family moved
into the house almost right across the street from us when I was in
home school in the fourth grade. He was about three years older then
me but also being educated at home which meant we had lots of time to
practice making ninja weapons and going fishing during the day while
the other kids were toiling away at school. I was instantly taken in
by marks vast knowledge of guy he knew about where he used to live
that had single handedly beat up six muggers. Another guy had killed
a man with his bare hands with a super dangerous fighting move they
had taught Mark but made him promise to keep secret and never to use
unless he was in mortal danger. Mark made lots and lots of paper
ninja stars and little grappling hooks from yarn and three paper
clips bent around to do the job just right. Mark loved to fish and
had almost caught every single record fish, or at least that is how
the story went, I never saw an exceptional fish with my own eyes.
Beyond record fish he even had a ready supply of cousins who lived
in a far away land, cousins in far away places seem to be the fibbers
stock and trade. One of these cousins had caught a catfish out of a
river by his house that weighed 4000 lbs! Now that seems unbelievable
in the most literal use of that word, in the sense that it is not
possible to believe that story, but at the time Mark had all the
details and I believed every word. He spun a tale of his cousin using
a whole rabbit for bait on a hook made out of rebar, coincidentally
made with rebar in almost the same way Mark made three pronged
grappling hooks out of paper-clips so it was easy to see how it would
be done, with that miniature analog sitting right there. He tied into
this fish using thousand pound test line on his pole and even at that
astronomical and possibly non-existent strength of line the battle
was by no means in hand. His cousin had to fight for 18 hours strait
and then the leviathan swum under a huge boulder and locked their
battle in a stalemate. I was worried but Mark already knew where the
rest of this story was going to go. He told me that his cousin tied
off the line and ran to get some scuba divers to free the line which
he did in no time, as you do. The scuba divers did not believe that
there was a 2 ton monster on the line but they agreed to go and free
his precious rebar treble hook. They should have believed because
their cavalier attitude nearly cost them their lives when they didn't
take proper precautions and approached the unnaturally large beast
all higgledy-piggledy. They soon learned of their mistake and just
escaped with their lives. Mark said when they came up from their
first dive one was completely white and catatonic and would never
dive again but the more stalwart of the duo soldered on got the
problem solved and the fight between man and fish was rejoined but
this time the line was tied to a backhoe, the only thing strong
enough to rest the king of the river to his terrestrial doom. I was,
naturally, very impressed and wanted more details but Mark was unable
to give me specifics on many things just that it was the biggest
catfish ever caught in the world. As you might expect the main stream
media has buried the story and that scandalous rag The National
Geographic claims the largest catfish ever captured was in Thailand
and weighed 646 pounds. Mark ought to set them strait, or at least
have his cousin do it.
