I wrote this in creative writing...it is a true story. It is long...sorry :).



"It was just a fishing trip, a favor for a friend, a break from my routine job as a mail carrier. Just a fishing trip, like all the others I have taken people on over the years.
I picked him up at his host’s family’s house. His hair was black and thick. It stood up in weird places on top of his head. He was just a 14 year old kid from Japan and his hosts wanted him to experience America. I agreed because it was for a friend. It is just a weekend hobby I have of taking people out on fishing trips. We spent the day on just one of Minnesota's lakes, just one of the blue blotches which break up our state on a map. I showed him how to cast his line out and reel it in quick so the neon lure looked alive. He jumped every time he got a nimble from a fish. I just told him to stay calm and tried not to laugh.

He seemed intense for being just 14, but then he was in a foreign
country. He seemed quiet, but then the English language was not his native tongue.

I asked him about sushi; I wondered if he could make it in a boat. I asked him what Pokemon was and if he knew any of them personally. I explained the eco-systems of Minnesota's lakes while telling stories of fish caught and ones that got away. I wondered about the atomic bomb and if it affected anyone in his family.

When the silence stretched I told him about my job. I gave him a 6 point over view of the United States postal system. He taught me how to cuss at fish in Japanese.

We took a picture at the end of the day both of us smiling with the lake in the background. We had not caught any fish; this was a disappointment to me. That weekend the twins won and everyone thought they just might have a good season.

Years passed, memory found a home in an average corner of my mind. It settled somewhere between Easter dinner at my aunts and a blind date I was trying to forget.

I've heard sometimes the aftershocks of an earthquake can be more intense then the actually quake.

A few weeks ago I received a call from Japan. It was the 14 year old boy’s family, in hesitant English his dad explained they were coming to American, and wondering if I would take them on a fishing trip. One like their son had taken. I was puzzled but agreed. If they wanted to come all the way from Japan for sushi ingredients who was I to deny them? The father went on to explain the purpose of their trip and my world shook.

When they came they carried with them a photo album. On the cover was a picture with just two people, me and a Japanese kid; our smiles frozen in time against the blue of one of Minnesota’s lakes. His smile is gone, his father told me on the phone. A few weeks ago their son had committed suicide.

Our fishing trip was something he had always talked about; in their grief they had come in order to capture what he had loved. They were retracing his steps, capturing the good in the midst of indescribable ache.

It was eerie trying to recall the fishing trip. They wanted every detail they had years of time in the future to fill with memories and no way to make new ones. I showed them where he had sat. I tried to remember some of our conversation, the parts that were not about Pokemon. I couldn't remember much, remembering had not been important at the time. It was just a fishing trip.

He was their only child.

It was just a fishing trip. A weekend trip where two lives intercepted. Two cultures floated on just one of Minnesota's lakes. Two different generations attempted to just make conversation, just moments of time stolen from a limited supply.

Would I have done something different if I had known? Would I have memorized every detail? Taken advantage of every moment?

If he could have seen them weep, would he have changed his mind?

Would it have still been just another fishing trip?"