Fishing with D.

My nephew D. is a little obsessed with fishing, and I have the privilege every now and then of taking him to my parents’ lake cabin to do so.

But, besides being obsessed with fishing, D.’s also a pretty hilarious ten-year-old. Monday, he spent the night with us, so that we could take him fishing the morning and afternoon of the fourth. I thought maybe we’d spend Monday night going to Superman Returns, but then I saw it was 164 minutes long, which made me think he might have a hard time sitting though it—and besides, D. didn’t really want to see it. He wanted to see the movie with the “grown man who looks like a baby”—which I figured out was the new Wayans’ brothers movie; it wasn’t in town. Then I thought maybe Nacho Libre. I queued the preview on the computer, and called D. over, and before the thing even began, D. was quoting the line about “stretchy pants” in a very Nacho-esque accent.

Anyway, we decided to go to Family Video to rent PS2 games. On the way there, we saw an African-American man walking down the street. D. is adopted, and also African-American, and when he saw the guy, he started saying, “I’m a black man, a black guy. I’m a black man walking down the street.”

I chuckled a little, not knowing where that came from, and kind of forgot about it. We rented two fishing games, a deer hunting game, and a very cool dirtbiking game. The next morning, we were off to the cabin.

About an hour after he started fishing, D. came up to the fishing tackle cabinet on the deck below where I was sitting and started poking around. I heard, floating up to me, “I’m a black man, a black guy. I’m a black man looking for a new fishing pole.”

*Photo by J.C., but tinted sepia so that it matches the blog.