Symbolism

I was reminded this past weekend of the first time I heard the story behind the Christian fish symbol.
The story was told to me by Dr. Lord, my Art History professor in college.
Dr. Lord was a stout woman who wore her gray hair short and slicked back. She had a deep gravely voice clearly attained from years of smoking. Dr. Lord was always smoking. Back when I was in college and especially in our art department, smoking in class was the norm. Little foil disposable ashtrays were even provided for our convenience.
So there we would sit in the dark looking at slides, smoking our cigarettes and listening to Dr. Lord’s gravely voice tell us stories of great works of art and architecture.

Dr. Lord’s smoking was a thing of great fascination, she would take these deep… long… draws on her cigarettes and hold… and then… she would begin to speak. She never exhaled and no smoke ever came out of that woman. She was like a smokeless ashtray.
We used to take seats in the back of class just to watch this in amazement.

But I digress… back to the fish.

Dr. Lord explained to us, between deep long draws on her Newport 100’s, that after the accession of Jesus, early followers of Christianity were somewhat persecuted. And so they devised a clever way of identifying each other in passing.
When two strangers met and thought maybe they were fellow believers, one of them would draw on the ground, perhaps casually with a walking stick, the upper half of the fish symbol.

Recognizing the symbol, the stranger would add a second curved line to complete the drawing of a fish.


I always liked this story… the whole secret society thing appealed to me – well except for the persecution part, but you get my drift.

What reminded me of this story was that I finally got around to adhering a Human Rights sticker to my car this weekend.

What I like about this symbol is that while it is widely know in my community it’s not readily recognized by the general populous.

I don’t personally feel persecuted, but it does make me feel like a part of some secret society … and I don’t mean that in the closeted sense.
I just like the idea of having it be seen on my car and immediately understood.
It conjures up ideas of perhaps meeting someone in the grocery store where my gaydar might be engaged and perhaps placing a string cheese strategically on the child seat in my shopping cart – only to have it added to by a pretzel rod from their cart….
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