Women Want Me. Fish Fear Me.

That was on a T-shirt I gave my dad as a gift years ago.
Underneath the words was a picture of a happy-looking man in a floppy fishing hat,
holding up a large fish and surrounded by smiling buxom beauties in bikinis who
appeared to be having a grand old time. That shirt has become his favorite.
It’s been washed so many times (at my mother’s insistence) that it’s now about
half-shirt and half-hole. In fact, the fish has pretty much disappeared except
for a section of tail fin and an alarmed-looking eye.

And the shirt’s laughing ladies have aged rather
dramatically, their buxom parts now stretched out and saggy. Sadly, it’s kind
of like what happens in real life.

If you stopped by my father’s house unexpectedly, there’s
about a 98-percent chance he would come to the door wearing that shirt. If you
happened to visit during one of those two-percent times when the shirt had been
wrestled off my dad’s body so that it could be washed, he’d greet you wearing
his backup T-shirt that proudly proclaims