The Kindness of Strangers

We had been leap-frogging a local man all day long, going from pier to pier looking for fish.  Although we had shared several smiles and silent looks, and he probably had his hardest laugh in some time watching us scramble cluelessly, and ultimately lose, a crab we managed to catch, neither of us had said a word to each other.  As dusk turned towards darkness, he walked up and asked kindly, "Where's the fish?"  We had to point lamely at our leaking bread bag propped up between my two sandals and the two little fish inside.  He of course was carrying a bag literally tearing under the weight of so many decently sized fish.  "Do you like fish?", he asked.  I had a feeling that by saying 'yes'...he was going to offer his catch.  So I hesitated, but couldn't lie.  He immediately set the entire bag down and lied, "My family doesn't like to eat fish anyways."  Off he went despite our refusals to accept his entire day's efforts, and seemed to tell another local man who asked where his catch was, "I gave it to them, and nodded in our direction."  I'll repeat it until the day I die, the biggest lesson from traveling the world is the kindness of strangers.
We at least did him the honor of taking them straight home, scraping off the scales, and pan frying a few of them to perfection.