Night Sharks

I have a thing for sharks, which I believe I have discussed before. Something in my brain just fires off the right way when I see a shark, I’m fascinated. They’re amazing, beautiful creatures that peer from out the shadow of fear in the depths of my mind.

In conjunction, I loved the movie Jaws as a kid. I still like it now, but it just doesn’t have the same pull it did when I was younger. By the time I was 12, I am sure that I had seen the film at least fifty times. Swimming, something else I love, has always been tied in with the film. Even in swimming pools, my imagination kicks in and I imagine sharks erupting from the deep.

One summer holiday weekend, we were out at my grandparents place on Hood Canal doing a little night swimming. My cousins, my uncle, my brother and I were goofing around in the water. Uncle Paul, big drunken jokester that he was, began doing the Jaws theme, trying to freak us out.

What Uncle Paul had neglected to take into account was that it was high tide. During high tide, things that are normally visible on the beach are now under water. Things like, say, the piece of piling that stuck out of the ground a good three feet, were now submerged.

With the 2 note theme coming out loud and proud, and with us kids yelling at him to knock it off as it was freaking us out, Uncle Paul swam backwards and away from our splashing hands. When he hit his back on that piling… Man, I had never heard a grown man scream that loud. He pushed off the bottom and flew at least 2 feet out of the water.

I laughed until I peed, which was okay as I was in the water.