I was informed that people were unsure what a Tall Tales Competition entry should look like. This is the (approximate) gist of my last Tall Tales enty. The text has been shortened from a 3 to 5 minute speech to the length I am willing to type in one sitting. It is offered for your amusement and edification, with the caveat that it lost at Division.
I really love to fish. But my line kept breaking. So I wove a filament out of surplus Kevlar fiber and doped it with crazy glue, producing a line with two interesting properties. One is that it is unbreakable. The other is that it is invisible (the light is warped around it). I'd include a photo of the invisible line but none of the photos came out.
Having invented an unbreakable fishing line I got ambitious and borrowed a small row boat and went out on Long Island Sound. I caught a small fish, then a medium fish then a pretty big fish. Then something took my hook and started pulling my boat all over the place. I had (foolishly, in retrospect) tied my line to my boat to free my hands. I was sawing at the fishing line with my knife but I couldn't cut it. Suddenly my boat started being pulled out towards open sea, with me hanging onto the gunwales for dear life. We went up swells and down troughs, over waves and through them. Finally, 10 miles out, I started getting slack. Whatever has my line is coming up to shallow water. I could see this great dark shadow in the water. It looks like a marlin. It looks like a whale. It looks like...Doggone it! I hooked a Russian submarine! (and double darn it, it's a diesel, I didn't even get one of the big nuclear jobs).
The Submarine surfaces and the captain (wearing all his brass, and with his great big belly, which is how you recognize Russian officers, the enlisted men are all under nourished) and this thin chief petty officer with a book climb out of the hatch. The captain says something to the petty officer, who looks in his book. He calls out to me "Boat your, how big is?" Eh..? OH! he's translating for the Captain and wants to know how big my boat is . "Four meters" I yell back, translating into metric to make it easy. The petty officer says something to the Captain, the Captain says something back, the petty officer looks in the book and yells to me, "Too small. We back you have to throw."