SCOF Meets the Fellas Over at MMA Fishing

It was a moment that had all the trappings of God’s handiwork, yet an epiphany on my part never really followed. My wife, son and I went to eat at The Crab Shack, and maybe because I was wearing a fly fishing hat, they sat us in the banquet hall as a wart to a table that was 30 fishermen strong. And, there was a clear sho’ nuff leader who began to speak to the whole room. He might as well have winked at my wife, because damn if I didn’t want to immediately argue with him, maybe even throw a punch. It had been that kind of night. I wanted to tell the 30 people at his table at The Crab Shack that this guy was full of shit. He seemed to command the floor, and for a brief moment I thought he was their pastor. I was not far off. He was the leader of MMA fishing, a guide and gear group that plays off the tropes of mixed martial arts. They don't catch fish, they make them submit. So he definitely would have kicked my ass. They were all spin guys, or as they would class it up by saying, they were all conventional guys. The leader projected his voice to the room, saying, “If your sponsor is giving you something, you need to use it. Put it in your videos. Don’t forget to post some GoPro stuff. I know it's annoying, but just do it.” He then moved on to fragmented high points on how to drive search engine optimization. It was a bizarro SCOF-type conversation, but it made me sick after the night I had undergone while trying to do something extra during the holidays. My wife Hillary kept saying, “What is this?” She was wasted after a night in Birmingham at the Zoo Light Safari. I was fed up and made it worse by very audibly saying, “I don't know, some kind of pyramid scheme.” But who am I to judge another middle-aged man’s pyramid scheme? The whole mixed martial arts bass fishing was over the top, and she was so put off by this redneck bubba fiesta that their refracted light made me look stupid, too, even though I catch fish 10 times cooler than these assholes. My wife was about to start yelling at these momos, and I was on a countdown to her going apeshit. So, I went to the register for Styrofoam boxes and began scraping my calamari and fried green tomatoes into the containers.

Even though she had sat us by these shitheels, I tipped the waitress 20 bucks because she was good looking for one; because she had sympathy for me in my current wifey situation for two; and because I knew I would see her again being that this is a small river town and the ebb and flow of things bring us all back into the same humble eddy eventually. When I got home, I looked up this crew of fishing tech bullshit. They had ruined my evening and become a carnivalesque mirror that made me look fat and stupid. I knew I was fat, but I am unaccustomed to feeling stupid.

The next day I was buying brownies for my own plans of checking out, just as my wife had done the night before. Then I saw my waitress walking up to me in front of the Dollar General. She smiled at me and said, “I served you last night.” I wanted to kiss her right there in front of the technicolor black and yellow lights of DG for remembering. I resisted though, as I might be 20 years her senior, and I am married. What would MMA fishing have done? They might have roundhouse-kicked my wife in the head the night before and left with the waitress. As cool and calmly as you can imagine with a

Bit Too Much Bravado In My Voice

I said, “Yeah, it is good to see you again. Have a nice day.” Someone really cool would have taken her back to SCOF headquarters and remembered what it was to bang one out with a total stranger. I had forgotten how over the years of unacknowledged service to my wife. Plus, I would never do that to my wife. For one, I have no compulsion to get cut by half. For two, it is just wrong. But the table of MMA fishers were doing life all wrong anyway if they were including their wives and children at the business meeting at The Crab Shack. I really almost believed it was a megachurch mens’ group but for their silent wives. What did they have that I did not have? I do not have biblical authority over my wife. I mean I do as much as any modern man, but I never try to use that privilege. Except the one time I said, “Because I am the man and I call the shots for this family!” She snickered at the utterance. Recently a friend of SCOF called me and said, “here's a tagline for ya: ‘Two agnostic Jews sell SCOF to four Baptist fundamentalists from Alabama.’” I assured him that this was not what really happened. I even stammered, “We have a Jew, too, and I am a Whiskeypalian who doesn't drink anymore.” That sounded about as cool as “\

Four Baptists take up fly fishing.”

Every year it gets a little better being in this growing Alabamian fly fishing community. Just know wives and future wives, if we ever get 500 true believers in SCOF, I won't make you suffer the tortures of crab shack snake oil slinging with me at the head of the table telling your husbands to use their GoPros. Hand on a stack of bibles.