Sharks
I was five years old the first time I saw a shark. He flashed across the big screen at the Martin Theatre, bits of what Hollywood thought resembled human flesh wedged in between his rows of teeth and red blood spewing forth freely. In response, I shrieked at the top of my lungs hysterically, until my nanny ran with me out of the building.
I would like to say that Jaws 2 ruined the ocean for me but, let’s face it, I’m afraid of everything. My mother, Betty, always the attorney, saw to that long before Steven Spielberg ever took a pass at me.
As a child, my body never went more than calf deep into the ocean because my extensive research had revealed that the bull shark, the most common villain of the Gulf of Mexico where my family vacationed, often attacked in as little as four feet of water. If I am ever attacked by a bull shark, it is because he sprouted legs and overtook me on the beach.
But stealthy predator aside, the Gulf was a myriad of dangers just waiting for the unwary tourist. I feared undertow, those below-surface rushes of water returning to the sea, because I knew undertow was a kissing cousin of the rip current. The rip current formed at breaks in sandbars, which allowed undertow to flow back out to sea more rapidly and took the inexperienced swimmer with it. My mother had pointed out to me on numerous occasions the patterns in the sand that were the tell tale signs of these below the surface killers that is, if you were watching for the signs. I heard stories of innocent swimmers unaware that they were being pulled out to sea, where I imagined the bull shark, propped up on a sandbar, waited patiently for his next meal. I also feared jellyfish, hermit crabs and do not get me started on the stingray.
I also refused to parasail, a huge tourist attraction that pulled the vacationer, strapped to a huge sail, up behind a ski boat and allowed them a bird’s eye view of the crystal clear waters of the Gulf. I knew what was down there and I sure as hell had no plans to either take off, or land, in any part of it.
And so my childhood trips to the beach were spent begging my siblings and parents to stick to the chlorinated safety of our motel pool, and screaming hysterically when they waded into that beautiful blue death trap. They frolicked in the surf and I roasted on the sand, my eyes trained on the horizon in search of the dorsal fin.
I never outgrew my fear of salt water, but instead, I adopted a policy that was easily adaptable to any situation that made me uncomfortable.
“If God wanted me to swim in the ocean he would have given me gills.”
“If God wanted me to fly he would have given me wings.”
The possibilities were endless.
And then I fell in love with a man who thinks mathematically. Much like the dolphin is the shark’s nemesis, such is the engineer to the trial lawyer. While I looked to the possibility of injury my husband, Captain America we will call him, looked to the probability. Our first trip to the beach was an effort in frustration. As I spread an arm in a wide gesture toward the ocean in front of us and launched into my presentation of “bull shark, serial killer of the sea,” he interrupted me!
“You are more likely to die in an airplane crash than be attacked by a shark,” he jabbered.
Do what? My fear of flying was a conversation better reserved for much later in our relationship, wedged somewhere between my fear of the tornado and the house fire. I certainly did not intend to discuss the dangers of flying PRE- shark safety seminar. And then, without so much as an apology or farewell, he stomped out into the ocean.
Our debate continued year after year, vacation after vacation. He stood waist deep in the beautiful blue water and attempted to lure me in and I shouted warnings from the safety of the beach.
“You can see to the bottom honey!” he would coax.
“Stingrays lie flat and are camouflaged on the sandy bottom until they attack!” I would counter.
We wed in 2003. How, with his always rational personality, he reconciled marrying “danger girl” I still do not understand, but I did want him to understand just how much his love meant to me. And so, after spending forty-five minutes with the ganja smoking boat operator (which is a different lecture for a different day), assuring me that I, as a lawyer, would be the only shark in those crystal clear Jamaican waters, I snorkeled.
Well, I called it snorkeling. I am not sure that what I did actually qualified, but I made the effort. My waist was wrapped tightly with a bright orange life jacket, and my body positioning, as a result, caused my head to bob in and out of the water. In my mind I looked like one of those plastic birds from the 1970’s that would attach to the corner of your glass and bob its head into your drink then raise itself back up. I was in the water all of fifteen, bullet sweating minutes, but I think Captain America appreciated the gesture. I never entered the ocean again, and we never spoke of the incident, but rather, simply resumed our yearly beach battle.
Last year, we loaded up and headed to Destin, Florida, this time with our son, the Boy Wonder, in tow. With a brain that is a strange and often confusing combination of both of his parents, sadly, the boy did not inherit my fear of the sea. Because the Captain learned long ago to tune out my statistics and safety warnings, I focused instead on the boy. My success was limited because the trial lawyer personality he inherited honestly from me would turn my infomercials into arguments regarding which one of us actually knew more about the topic. In July 2009, I again found myself alone on the beach, as my men jumped the waves, splashed, frolicked and enjoyed themselves safe in the knowledge that they never had to worry about anything because I worried enough for all of us.
Like any good mother I was armed with my camcorder, always ready to preserve any of the Boy Wonder’s childhood milestones in the hopes I could use them to embarrass him later in life, perhaps at his wedding rehearsal dinner. I recorded the sweet moment, as father lifted son upward and over the high waves that approached, and of course added some of my own witty commentary along the way. And then, Captain America lifted the boy, as if preparing to jump the next wave, but instead turned and launched him toward the beach. He hit the shallows and fell over repeatedly as he ran toward me. When he had almost reached me, the boy stopped, flapped his arms wildly, shouted something I could not decipher, turned and charged back toward his father, who was backing slowly toward us. It appears I had inadvertently recorded a four foot bull shark as it brushed past my husband and son in less than four feet of water! As my heart raced and my head spun only one thing came to mind,
“I TOLD YOU SO!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, which strangely enough came out unintelligible and as little more than a squeak.
As we quickly gathered our belongings and rushed toward the car it occurred to me that in all my years of shark patrol I had never known what to do if I spotted a shark, as the opportunity had never actually presented itself. Almost as an afterthought I leaned into the snack stand and asked the teenager filling a ketchup bottle,
“Hey, do you know where you report seeing a shark?”
“In the ocean?” asked the second teenager who popped up from out of my line of sight.
“Well he wasn’t on the beach,” I replied.
He jumped the snack counter and began blowing into the whistle tied around his neck.
“Note to self,” I thought, in preparation for my next lecture, “report shark encounters to nearest lifeguard.”
I would like to say that this experience caused my husband and son to at last respect the dangers that lie disguised by the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. I would have settled for their acceptance of my fears as valid. We are currently vacationing on the coast and as I launched into a revised version of my prior lecture, this one newly titled “Bull shark, closer than you think,” Captain America interrupted!
“Now that I have come in contact with a shark there is a higher likelihood that two airplanes would collide in mid- air, crash to the earth and I would die after being struck by one of the lavatories, than I would ever come in contact with another.”
I turned and walked back up the beach. Some people just do not want to be helped.
