Be careful in the water!

When I was a young child, I was scared of three monsters: the monsters that hid underneath my bed, the boogie monster in my closet, and Jaws. Now I eventually grew out of the boogie monster. I figured out he was just figment of my imagination. I could probably be convinced that the monster underneath my bed isn’t real too, but I’ll never give in on Jaws. He’s real and he’s trying to get me.

When I was seven, Jaws hit the movie theaters. My mother wouldn’t let me see it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hear about it from my brothers and friends on my bus and, yes, it scared the bejesus out of me. Get in the water? You gotta be kidding me. I didn’t even want to get a stinking bath. If Jaws was as powerful as I thought he was, I figured he’d come up with a way to get me there too. (It didn’t matter that we lived more than 240 miles inland from the nearest ocean.)

Of course, thanks to Jaws, sharks have hit the big time. There’s so much interest in sharks, Discovery Channel has held its annual Shark Week every year since 1988, with the next one starting this coming week on Tuesday, July 11.

Sharks may be portrayed as big bad monsters, but they’re actually just as scared of humans. Encounters with sharks are extremely rare. On average, there are about 100 documented shark attacks around the globe each year.

Despite my fear, I long came to love the ocean. In fact, we came to a mutual agreement, I give the ocean depths a wide berth and Jaws promises to not come to close to coastline or out of the sky, Sharknado style, and take a bite out of me.

I’m safe so far.

“You will love the ocean. It makes you feel small, but not in a bad way. Small because you realize you’re part of something bigger.”

—Lauren Myracle

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”

—E. E. Cummings

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