|
Pravin Kumar
Age: 60 Zodiac: 
|
|
 Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:56 am |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Jump, Mullet, Jump
Linda Ballou
I moved to Florida’s panhandle from Providence, Rhode Island, when I was seven, and I came home in tears after my first day in my new second-grade class.
“The teacher made me be a mullet,” I wailed to my mother. “Some of the other kids got to be kingfish or snapper or bluefish, but I have to be a mullet,” I sobbed.
I had no idea what a mullet was. I guessed it must be some kind of fish, but I sure didn’t like the sound of it, and I absolutely did not want to be called one. My mother, a newly transplanted Yankee herself, was wise in the ways of cod and haddock, but could offer nothing in the way of mullet advocacy.
The problem was passed on to my stepfather, a Gulf Coast native and the reason we had moved to Florida.
“A mullet!” Dad exclaimed, upon hearing the story. “Why, that’s just about the very best thing you could be ’cept maybe a porpoise.”
I must have looked dubious, because he continued, “Tell you what, we’ll go out to the bayou, just you and me, and I’ll introduce you to some.”
We drove out of town in the new mustard-colored Chevy, then took a winding sand-and-shell road to a tiny beach at the edge of a shallow bay. The late afternoon sun reflected pinky-orange on the surface of the water. The air smelled like a heady combination of my mother’s cedar chest and old Easter eggs. My stepfather squatted by the edge of the water and motioned for me to join him.
“Sometimes you have to give them a little encouragement,” he said. He cupped his hands around his mouth like a cheerleader and called, “Jump, mullet, jump.”
The response came so quickly that I almost jumped myself. Just a few feet away from us a plump snub-nosed fish leaped straight up into the air, then fell back into the water with a smack.
Wonder-struck and wide-eyed, I mimicked my stepfather, and we chanted in unison, “Jump, mullet, jump!” We must have kept those fish hopping for nearly an hour before the sun got so low that we had to leave and head home.
I could barely wait to tell my mother about the acrobatic fish and how we made them leap right out of the water. The next morning, I was eager to get to school so I could join the other members of the mullet group.
It’s been nearly half a century since that memorable afternoon on the bayou, and I now live on an island just off the coast of Florida. During certain months of the year, scores of mullet swim into the saltwater canal behind my house.
Sometimes, on quiet nights, I am roused from my sleep by the splashes of their timeless leaping ritual. And, even though it’s been many years since I found out that the mullet were going to jump whether I gave them orders or not, I still smile and repeat the words my stepfather taught me so long ago.
“Jump,” I whisper, “jump, mullet, jump.”
|
Welcome to Mystic Board - Free Astrology, Tarot to Psychic Discussion Board. New visitors: Register Now its FAST! Members, please Sign-In.
