I was like 10 in Florida out in the ocean on an inflatable and all of the sudden the lifeguards started blowing whistles and hustling everyone onto shore. Maybe they put flags up or waved flags? I may not remember that part accurately but the whole thing on the shore was dramatic and everyone running out of the water to get on the beach. Except me. I was way the fuck out there because someone told me there was a sand bar and the water got shallow again, but where I was in that moment was too deep for me to do anything but float, so I’m like what the fuck is happening?

And then all these fish started jumping out of the water, some of them actually landing on my little raft thing before flopping off back into the water. I don’t remember that part being scary but I do remember it being crazy. Tons of fish just erupted out of the water. Turns out, they were trying to escape the sharks. Just tons and tons of sharks suddenly everywhere. I hiked every part of my body all the way on the shitty little raft and could see them swimming under the water and all around me. Some of them were thrashing about and some of them were just darting quickly under water and then some of them were just swimming like you would picture sharks just casually cruising around. I was convinced it was a feeding frenzy and I was fuuuuuucked. As many sharks as anyone has ever seen in once place.

So to make a long story shorter I managed to paddle as gently as I could to get back to the waves breaking and try to use that to bring me in, otherwise I was pretty much just going to be in no man’s land for the foreseeable future. It worked. I can’t remember if that took me 5 minutes, an hour or a week but I did get back to shore and the lifeguards absolutely chewed me out. Like dude, I’m just some hick kid from Arkansas, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, did I almost die? And you’re mad at me?

Very true to our generation my parents were like a quarter mile away on the beach just chillin. When I walked back to them finally they had no idea anything was going on. Or at least weren’t panicked. I just remember them not having any follow up questions about where I had been.

Anyway, between that and Jaws you’d think I’d have developed a fear of sharks and I did a little bit for a minute but it didn’t last long.