Water. I took it for granted as a kid. It was always there, unlike the people that came and went in my life. Water- cool, clean, and always willing to fill a glass. It soothed the hot summer days, flooded off my roof and back into the river out back our place. It was never ending. Forever and giving. I never questioned its survival.

Until, the one day I grew up and faced a body of water that was great and wide. There were fish in the water and fishing boats with lines dipping in. I bobbed in a boat like the rest of them, eager to reap a reward at the end of my fishing line. And I did.

I remembered my excitement. I remembered thinking how glorious that fish would be cooked on our BBQ. I remembered the voice that said, “There was no way we could ever eat that fish. It’s poison. Full of mercury. Can’t eat it. No way.”

They wanted to stuff it. Mount it on a plaque.

I stared at them in wonder. Was this what we should be remembering?

The fish, with its glassy eyes, stared back at me from a wall in a room I never went into.

It wondered too.

—

This short tale of Linda’s water experiences was from her days growing up on the Detroit River and fishing out on Lake Ontario. Learn more about Linda at her website or on twitter.

Want to submit a water story? No donation required, and it’ll enter you for a great, water-themed prize drawing at the end of each month of the campaign. Water stories are accepted any time, from now to June 28.