Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers.  Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary. I have always thought it would be better if fishing turned men into Wall Street bankers, but that is not the case. It's philosophers or nothing.
     I became a philosopher at age twelve, after a scant six years of fishing. One evening at supper I looked up from my plate and announced, "I fish; therefore, I am." Perhaps awed by this evidence of precocity in a young boy, my stepfather turned to my mother and asked, "Is there any more gravy?" Thus encouraged, I forgot about philosophy until I went off to college.
   The intellectual experience of life in a college dorm proved to be enormously stimulating, and soon I was engaged in a variety of scientific experiments. My research paper, "Levitation: A Roommate's Response to a Garter Snake in His Bed," caught the fancy of a psychology professor who invited me to join him in research on abnormal behavior in lesser primates. Three months later, I made a remarkable discovery. If I pressed either the red or green buttons, nothing happened, but if I pressed the yellow, a bunch of bananas would drop out of a hole in the ceiling. Not caring much for bananas, I resigned my position and went in search of more serious, if not more fruitful, studies.
   While trying to decide on a major in college, I picked up a minor in philosophy, one Maylene Whipple by name, who could have passed for twenty-five any day of the week. It came as a shock to me to learn that the precocious Maylene was only seventeen, particularly since we had already engaged in discourse on the Hegelian dialectic, which is a felony in most states even if committed by consenting adults. Maylene was amazed at my grasp of all the world's great philosophies, but less so at my grasp of her left knee, to which she responded with a karate chop that left my wrist bones in shambles.
   "Where did you learn so much about philosophy?" Maylene asked, as I smiled suavely, clutching my throbbing wrist in an armpit. 
   "From fishing," I said. "I started fishing at age six, and by the time I was twelve, I was a full-fledged philosopher ."
   "Pooh! Fishing can't turn you into a philosopher!" she said.
   "Oh yeah!" I said. "How about Francis Bacon? How about him?"
   "What about Francis Bacon?"
   "Why, Bacon was nothing but a humble tailor until he took up fishing. Five years later, he invented the scientific method and changed the course of history, despite never having landed a brown trout over fourteen inches."
   "That's incredible!" Maylene gasped.
   "Yes," I replied, "particularly when you consider there were plenty of really big brown trout around back then. The rule is, however, the worse the fisherman, the better the philosopher."
   I went on to explain to Maylene that Aristotle was known among his associates merely as "one weird dude" until he met up with Plato. "Teach me to be a philosopher," Aristotle pleaded.
   Plato was immediately intrigued by the young man. "All right," he said. "Let us begin with the basics: Truth, justice, and how to bait a hook properly."
   Plato himself was so miserably inept at fishing that he eventually wrote The Republic, which is just about as bad as you can get when it comes to catching fish. Much to Plato's disappointment, The Republic was rejected by all the leading outdoor publications of the day.
   "That sounds pretty fishy to me," Maylene said.
   "Yes," I replied. "That is what I am trying to tell you. All philosophy is pretty fishy underneath."
   "Underneath what?" Maylene asked.
   "I don't know that yet," I said. "I'm only a sophomore."