I am a terrible father. I’ll even take that a step further and say I’m a terrible man in general. My bro status should be revoked. Take my truck that’s so big I’m obviously compensating for something away from me. Shave my beard. I’m a fraud. Because I can’t tie knots.
It feels good to get that off my chest. My name is Graham Averill, I’m a 48-year-old man who has made a career in the adventure sports industry, and I cannot tie knots.
My lack of knot-tying abilities has been an issue since I was a young child. My father, an engineer who loved fishing and strapping random objects to the top of vehicles, tried to teach me a variety of knots for years, but I could never grasp any of them. I remember even getting frustrated when I had to learn how to tie my shoes in kindergarten. I broke down and asked, “Why can’t I just wear loafers?!”
Fast forward 40 or so years, and now I’m a middle-aged man who is prone to wearing slide-on shoes and avoiding situations where knots are necessary. My inability to tie two pieces of rope together has kept me from pursuing activities like yachting and lead climbing El Cap. But I’ve managed to fly under the radar thus far, successfully avoiding sailing and situations where one’s knot-tying ability could mean the difference between life and death. I’ve muddled through day-to-day life, operating under a single principle: “If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.” Honestly, I’m amazed that I haven’t fallen to my death or, worse, caused a multi-car pile-up on an interstate by losing a boat off the roof of my vehicle. The advent of ratchet straps improved my quality of life significantly, as I no longer had to use rope to tie things like boats or paddle boards to roof racks.
But my 15-year-old son recently fell in love with fishing, which has completely exposed me as a fraud, because they don’t make ratchet straps for fly rods. The dude is obsessed with the sport in a way that I can’t quite understand. I’ve gone through periods in my life where I tried in earnest to develop a love for fly fishing. Decades ago, while working construction in Atlanta, I would break up the rush hour commute by casting into the Chattahoochee River. The occasional fishing adventure has popped up from time to time for work, and I got super excited about the advent of Tenkara rods, which eliminate a lot of the hassle involved with fly fishing gear. But the passion that most anglers have for the sport has eluded me. People assume I fish because I’m a bearded white guy of a certain age who spends a lot of time in the mountains, but alas, it’s not my bag.
My son fishes every chance he gets, though. He keeps his spin rod in my truck and casts whenever he finds water. He’s taken to riding his OneWheel to fish the creek at the bottom of the neighborhood. And when I say “creek,” I mean polluted drainage ditch. He’s even been kicked out of the local country club for fishing one of their ponds. I couldn’t be more proud.
Here’s the problem: His newfound love has put me in an awkward position where his knowledge of a subject now outweighs my own. This doesn’t happen often through the course of a young child’s life. Video games, sure, (he can kick my ass at FIFA) and that weird summer where he was super into Pokemon cards, but for the most part, my son has been into the same kind of stuff that I’m into: baseball, mountain biking, John Wick marathons…you know, typical dude stuff. Those situations give me the chance to pass along my hard-earned wisdom. You know, things like “the deeper into the backcountry you go, the better that half-eaten pocket burrito will taste.”
But I got nothing when it comes to fishing.
“Dad, can we use these pocket burritos as bait?”
I don’t know.
“How come brook trout don’t mate with rainbow trout?”
They’re racist.
And the real kicker: “Can you tie this fly onto the line for me?”
No, son. I can’t. Why can’t they make a tiny version of the ratchet strap that keeps a fly on the line? Why, God, why?!
I know in my heart that knot-tying is one of those skills a dad is supposed to pass down to his offspring, and I always intended to learn the skill. I’ve tried apps and how-to books, I’ve subjected myself to intense multi-day trad climbing camps that had me learning knots and setting anchors out in the wild. The success of every effort has been short-lived, though. I can’t seem to retain the knot-tying knowledge. Ask me what happened on the third season of Knight Rider when I was 8 years old and I’ll tell you; but ask me to tie the knot that I learned yesterday and I got nothing.
Is it possible that I have a very rare and specific learning disability that’s centered on joining two pieces of rope together? Is it a disease? Is there a pill for it?
If it is a disease, it obviously skipped a generation. My dad is great at knots, and my son seems to have picked them up quickly. When I disappointed him with my lack of knowledge, he turned to the greatest source of wisdom in the history of mankind: YouTube. In just a few days, he’s learned a handful of useful knots from social media influencers who also make more money than I do, not that I’m keeping score or anything.
And now, in some weird role reversal, when we’re fishing, I often have to ask him to tie a new fly onto my line for me, like we’re in that movie with Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron where the dad and son switch bodies. Actually, now that I think about it, having my son do the hard bits for me isn’t that bad. Maybe I can get him to set up the tents on camping trips and push me up hills on hard mountain bike rides. This could be the beginning of a beautiful new chapter in our lives.
