You Should Have Seen The One That Got Away

There is a popular running joke which is used to gently mock fishermen. It essentially runs that a fisherman who shows off his catch looks apologetic at its relatively small size, and says to their audience “you should have seen the one that got away.

It was huge.” Commonly, this joke is expanded upon by the unfortunate angler spreading their arms wide, to demonstrate the length of the fish which, by the fourth telling of the story, has begun to rival Moby Dick in terms of size.

There is a grain of truth in the stereotype, but no more so than that which exists for any hobby.

You will always find at least one golfer in any club that you walk into who shows you, by means of putting their thumb and forefinger very close together, how close they were to getting a hole in one.

The keen amateur soccer player will talk of a goal they scored which, when they originally hit it, was about ten yards out. By the time they have finished talking about it, they’ll be saying how they were somewhere around the halfway line.

This kind of bravado exists anywhere where there is competition. It is mostly self-mocking in any case, where people jokingly plead with you to believe that they are so good at what they do that they can achieve feats that are beyond the reach of a mere mortal.

And frankly, it is what makes most hobbies so much fun. We’d be nowhere without our boasts.