That’s What Friends Are For
by Robbie Rae
So, this appeared on my facebook.
It was a status update from one of my very best friends: Web MD.
Such a good pal. We’ve been friends since primary school.
Anyway, my old mate Web MD, at whose wedding I was the best man and gave a most impressive speech, asked me a rather interesting question this evening:
“Do you know healthy facts about fish?”
I thought about it for a moment. “No…” came the gradual realisation. “No, I don’t know healthy facts about fish.”
At first I thought it a little strange that he would ask such a thing.
But the more thought I gave it, the more I realised, well, that’s the sort of thing my old mucker Web MD would do. He can make you stop in your tracks like that. He’s a real interrogator.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an idiot. I know some facts about fish.
Not all the facts about fish – a fish expert I most certainly am not.
But I can tell a perch from a bream. I know the taste of salmon to trout. I know a pike can be attracted to shiny things and that there’s a story in my family where my great-great-grandfather invented some kind of method where you put a stake in the ground to catch them. In fact, come to think of it, the whole Rae side of my family come from fishermen so, even though I do know a few facts about fish, I’m probably a bit of a family dissapointment when it comes to piscatory-knowledge as a whole.
And now this ancestral negligence had come back to cruelly bite me on the arse.
“I don’t know healthy facts about fish!”
I felt empty.
“Why don’t I know healthy facts about fish?” I asked myself. “I’m a relatively intelligent and well-educated chap.” And while my old friend Web MD had not specified a specific number of healthy facts about fish with which I should be familiar, talking as he was in more absolute terms, I did find myself thinking:
“Surely I must know at least one healthy fact about fish?”
But none were forthcoming.
As sure as I could not recall the registration plate of my Dad’s first car, I was drawing a categorial blank when it came to healthy facts about fish.
The shame!
So, suitably humbled and chastised by my old pal Web MD for my unforgiveable ignorance on this matter, I set about immediately upping my game, sorting myself out, and going to the library to take out every single book they had on the well-thumbed subject of healthy facts about fish.
I will be a better man because of it.
But, hey, that’s what friends are for, right?
Thanks facebook!
