Fish Story
A fisherman and his wife had twin sons. They were happy about it, but they couldn’t think of any names for these twin boys that they liked. The fisherman said, “Well, let’s not pick the names right now. If we give it a little time, I know the right names will just come to mind.” When the boys were two months old, their parents noticed a funny thing about them. If they just watched the boys for a few minutes, hands off, they noticed that one of the boys would always turn himself so he was facing the sea, and the other would always face inland. The parents could arrange the boys any way they liked, but they’d always sort themselves out so the same one faced the sea, and the other one faced away from it.
The fisherman said, “Let’s call the boys Towards and Away.” His wife agreed (very unusual wife, I think). And so their names were Towards and Away.
The years passed. The boys grew tall and strong. One day the fisherman, who was getting along in years, told them, “Boys, it’s time you learned to make your living from the sea.” So the boys and their father made preparations, said goodbye to the mother, and set out on their boat for a three-month voyage. The fisherman’s wife was accustomed to her husband being at sea for long periods of time, but not her boys. So she waited anxiously for the three of them, marking off each day on the calendar. But when the three months were up, her menfolk hadn’t come back. Three more months – no sign.
In fact, three years went by, and she had given them up for dead. Then one morning, she saw a haggard, bedraggled old man struggling up the path to her house. When he was close enough, she recognized him as her husband. But he was alone. “Where, oh where are the boys?”
The fisherman said, “We were barely a day out to sea when Towards hooked a giant fish. He fought it long and hard, but that fish was just too much for him. For a whole week, Towards and that fish fought each other. And finally that fish pulled Towards right out over the side of the boat, into the sea, and swallowed him whole.”
“Oh, that’s awful!” cried the wife. “What a huge fish that must have been!”
“Yes, it was,” said her husband. “But you should have seen the one that got Away!”
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