On the subject of FISH and DUCKs

“Fish man! Missed again!”,yelled my senior Faran, as the basketball bounced away from him, after having barely missed the basket. There were a lot of basketball matches coming up for the boys’ team to compete in and being one of the best players, Faran was training hard. As his fans and keen observers, many of the girls’ team members watched him from the bleachers. Some took pointers on his layups, majority on his dimples, and me, on his language. Being in the 7th grade, the word used by him “fish” was new to me. Profanities were limited to the good ol’ monkey, donkey, stupid, idiot. Neither did I identify fish as a bad word. Having sat there, watching the boys’ team practice hard, I witnessed many amazing baskets, and watched some near misses, some that soared over the board, missing their target completely. All of the latter were accompanied by liberal usage of the word fish. Hence my mind made the connection that one used the word when they failed to score a shot. Not having evolved too much from my ancestors, I aped them while missing a crucial basket while playing a one-on-one with my junior, Prateek. Now this kid came up to my chin and his brown beautiful crown of hair gave a misleading appearance of a halo. He was far from being an angel, and his big pretty eyes always twinkled with mischief before he swore at you or made fun of your very existence. The word I used stopped in his tracks, right before he could start his victory dance. He said, “What did u just say?”. “Fish”,i replied. “Do u even know what it means?” he asked. “It’s a basketball term for when you miss a basket”, came my reply. And that triggered guffaws from this tiny fellow, and watching his body shake in mirth made me want to kick him in the shin. “No! Fish is what people do to have kids! Oh my God, u seniors are such stupid brainless fishers!” Taken aback, I somehow mustered enough strength to collect my basketball and stormed out off of the basketball court.

This was nearly at the end of 7th grade, and in one particular session in class, I was selected to keep score for the oral test that would see the columns of students in my class vying for the highest score. So you had team A, to which I belonged, team B, to which my arch-enemy Suresh T belonged and team C, which does not have anything to do with this story. The test started, and the teacher posed a question to each team, and I maintained the scores on the blackboard. Half way into this game/test I think I accidently-on-purpose gave my team an extra point, prompting ST, the only person who noticed this, to literally jump off his seat and he yelled,”Ma’am! Priya is cheating! She gave extra points to her team!” The teacher turned around, looking a little confused and asked me to rectify it. I did so, and heard my team sigh. Oh well, at least I had tried! When team B’s turn came, I awarded them one point lesser, just for fun, and ST was about to yell again. I mouthed “Fish Off”. And that being the first time anyone in the history of 7th grade used the word Fish (or mouthed it), he sat frozen in his seat, a hand covering his agape mouth. I don’t recall exactly to whom he complained, if it was my class teacher or the one in the room, but my year went downhill from there. I was summoned to the teacher’s cabin and was asked who taught me that word. I said that the seniors used it all the time. So one of those really annoying house captains came to our class and tried to explain to my class teacher and all my peers that they would never use such a word and blah blah blah. The little elephant was liked a lot by all the teachers, so they bought the story. I was shunned by my classmates, and I don’t think anyone spoke to me after that. Until that point, I was a pet of all the English teachers in the school, but one particular one was very fond of me. She had a husband in the military, and had a commanding style. She now gave the dirtiest looks possible and did not change her behavior towards me for nearly 2 years after that. That hurt me the most. I had my rebel streak the highest at that point, only to peak again in the tenth grade, but life was really hard then. All because of a dumb word I used.

Of course things got better the next grade, since I was in another section. But this gets me wondering, where did the rest of my friends pick up this word? And use it for the first time? Only when I am really pissed do I use it to convey my state of being pissed off. This one time, perhaps 3 weeks ago, a stupid lady on a Scooty banged into my car as I was about to take a U-turn. I was enraged, because I think the blinking indicator that was flashing on the sides of my car, meant that I was about to turn. My motor mouth yelled at her, saying, “You fishing woman! Can you not see the indicator? Who the hell gave you a license? You dumb ass!”, this being a mild version of what I actually said. It would not really make a dent in my conscience (thanks to the lovely dent she made in the car) if it was not for my mom sitting in the passenger seat. She was mortified and disgusted at my choice of words, and said so in many words, each making me wince in shame. That’s another time I really regretted using the F word in its entirety, if not in vain.

I’d rather use freaking,effing,fish in its place. The wise tall one has also on several occasions reprimanded me for using the actual version of the word. This really gets me thinking, there are some people out there who use this word so liberally and actually consider it a cool thing to use the word. Call me backward or immature or plain boring, for not using this word as often as there are scams in India. I have learnt the hard way that using the word rhyming with duck is not acceptable, unless you really are up to something under the consent of the king! 😉