A FISH STORY

One of my favorite movies of all time is Destry Rides Again starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Stewart plays a legendary gunfighter's son who is hired to be the sheriff of a corrupt town because it is assumed he is like his gun-totin' father. However, the new "Destry" uses psychology and the law to round up the bad guys. A great film.

Destry, played by James Stewart, tells wonderful stories with a moral that are meant to teach someone a little lesson about life. The townspeople never quite figure out what he is saying.


One of my classes is a remedial math class. That means the students get a double dose of math, and my class is designed to cover material taught a few years ago that they haven't learned yet. They generally hate math, hate my class, and don't do well in math. However, one of the girls is doing exceptionally well.

I told her, "Marty, if you would work harder in your other math class and raise your DBA scores, you could be promoted out of this class. You are like a fish that has bitten a hook and you find yourself on the bottom of a boat flopping around. You don't want to be there, about to be be gutted, scaled, and thrown in a frying pan. If you would do better, it would be like you were the fish but you were thrown back into the water. You'd be saved from the frying pan."

Marty stared at me with a blank face and said, "I don't like fish."

That's the same reaction Destry got from his little stories.