day 10400: ready to face the sharks
My absolute-all-consuming terror of sharks stems from childhood. That’s what happens when your parents take you to the theatre to see Jaws and hum the “duh-dum-duh-dum” theme song on the way home.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the ocean, lake, pool or bathtub. “Duh-dum-duh-dum” plays over and over in my mind while my overactive imagination visualizes a great white shark somehow swimming its way up to Lake Ontario, squeezing into the pipes and bursting through the walls to come after me.
I was a very fast swimmer as a child, seeing as how I never wanted to be caught in the middle of the pool when the sharks came for me.
Tonight, I will face the fear. Swimming is about all the exercise I can do for the next few weeks, so swimming it will have to be. Memories float through my mind… a tearful Cape Cod trip where I was forced to enter the waters of the Atlantica… a rafting trip on the Ottawa River where Kapoopie snuck up behind me and yelled “Shark!”…
“I guess it would be mean if someone painted little sharks all over your new goggles.”
“I wouldn’t be able to see then… but really, I almost splurged for the hologram ones of razor teeth fish… just in case a shark does come through the walls, I might be able to scare them off. But they only came in kids sizes. Boo…”
“Well. Try not to get eaten and try not to drown.”
“Thanks, babe, for caring.”
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