[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]esterday, I hung a mounted fish above our bed. I had it stuffed several years ago because I enjoy looking at it. I like to remember the day I caught it, which as it turns out, never actually happened.

The story goes like this: my nephew accidentally dropped his hotdog into the water, and the next thing I knew, fish were feeding on it. Then, all of a sudden, a large fish leapt right into the boat.

At first, my nephew tried to claim the fish for his own, but I humbly reminded him that it was my boat, and that I had supplied his hotdog. My nephew pitched a fit, so I handed him a pair of Coast Guard issue water wings, and a whistle.

Subsequently, I had the thing stuffed – the fish, not my nephew – and avowed to never tell the real story of how it was caught.

I hung the fish on the wall above our bed, so that it would be the first thing I saw in the mornings, and the last thing I saw at night. It looked superb too. Nate Berkus himself would’ve agreed that it pulled our shabby chic décor together, with masculine understatements of rugged sophistication. Just looking at the fish made me want to go pillage something, and then gnaw on some ribs around a campfire.

This morning, when I woke up, my forehead was bleeding, there was a stuffed fish laying next to me in bed. And after the doctor gave me five stitches, only inches above my left eyebrow; after I screamed like a little girl; after my wife laughed until she pissed herself.

I hung it again.

On her side of the bed.