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I don’t know why I can’t do simple, fun activities without them spiraling out of control, but that seems to be the norm.

Take fishing. I mean really, how hard is it? Huck Finn showed us all it takes is a stick and string with a hook on it.

But fishing is not about having a pleasant time. It’s about survival. It’s about killing or being killed. It can be — if not life-threatening — life-altering in the most bizarre ways.

Allow me to illustrate.

While my family sojourned for seven years in the Pacific Northwest, I was struck with the salmon fishing fever that afflicts many up there. In the western Washington Evergreen trees, where it rains 300-plus days a year, people either salmon fish in the rain, drink Seattle’s Best or Starbuck’s coffee, go hiking up the Cascade ranges or start a grunge band with a weird name like “Screaming Trees.” That’s it.

So when my friend, Fred, suggested we go kayaking in Puget Sound in the rain and fish at the mouth of a river where salmon were running, I thought, “Why not? Fred’s an experienced outdoorsman. What could happen?”

I was nearly drowned in the first 60 seconds, that’s what. As we pushed off in the two-man kayak into the roaring, rain-swollen Cowlitz River, the current caught the kayak and pushed us directly into a 15-foot-high log pile that had been swept into a nearby corner of the river. Or under it, I should say.

I’d heard enough locals talk about log piles to know being swept under one meant certain death from drowning. So here I was right off the bat, going under the logs of death, pinned into a kayak, unable to jump out.

As my life flashed before my eyes, I saw my wife, Janet saying, “How dare you die, leaving me alone with the kids!”

To avoid hearing this reproach in heaven, I literally held on for my life, grabbing the log now directly over my head as cold, white water cascaded over me. I pushed backward with all of my might.

Fred was yelling something about quazzing the frimmel over the dembuck, but I was too busy not drowning to follow his instructions. Somehow the kayak slowly nosed to the right and, seconds later, we were off down the river cruising with the current. I turned around and glared at Fred.

“Sorry about that,” he grinned. “I didn’t know we’d come up on that pile so quick.”
“Is that what you would have told Janet if I’d drowned?” I asked.

Fred was silent for a second then said brightly, “Well, the worst is over.”

If only he’d been right.

We floated out the mouth of the river and fished until light’s end. No fish. I shivered, soaked to the bone. Pneumonia was certain.

“First logs of death, now this,” I thought.

As darkness descended, I was inspired to give one last cast with the bright orange lure with the treble-hook. I couldn’t see much but I cast. The line whizzed and than suddenly snapped tight in the air.

A snagged line means the hook is coming back right at ’cha. I ducked. I didn’t see the lure as it hit me in the right eyebrow, but I could sure feel it. The problem was when I looked up again, I couldn’t find the lure on my jacket.

“Where is it?” I wondered aloud.

“Dude,” Fred said slowly, “You have a fish hook in your eye.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see a bright orange thing dangling next to my eye. I blinked. I could feel the barbed hook scraping against my eyeball. Remaining cool and calm, I said, “Get us to shore now before I pass out.”

On shore I lay panting on the beach like a salmon on a hook while Fred, an ex-Navy corpsman, evaluated.

“Hmmm, you know, I could push the hook through your eyelid like this ….”

“Nooo,” I cried. I hadn’t survived his miscalculations at the logs of death to have him blind me on the beach. As we drove to the hospital in Olympia, holding my eyelid so my eyeball wouldn’t touch the barbs, I wondered what I would say to Janet, or even the ER admitting nurse.

“This could only happen to me,” I thought.

So with trepidation, I walked up to the ER desk, hiding the lure with my hand. The night nurse surveyed me and said, “OK, I give up. What’s the matter with you?”

I took the hand off the lure, expecting her to push the panic button. Instead, she looked exasperated.

“Not another one,” she said. “There was a guy in here 20 minutes ago with a hook in his nose.”

“There was?” I said, disbelieving.

“Happens to guys all the time,” she said monotonously. “Salmon are running.”

As I went to the exam room, I took another look. Maybe it’s the “normal” experiences that are so elusive after all. There’s no one out there whose life is the standard. Comparing myself to imagined “other people” just leads to self-defeatist thinking.