How Jaws scared the crap out of me

When I think back to the my childhood, there are several events that stand out for me, but one in particular stands out most vividly; and that memory is of sharks, or - more specifically - one particular shark.

At a very young age, I was introduced to motion pictures. I was instantly in love with them, and to this day, that love affair has only become deeper and more fulfilling. In the 70's, you HAD to watch each movie in the theater or you would have to wait years until the movie would be adapted for television.

So, I was raised to feel a compulsion - a sense of urgency came with every release.

The first movie I remember seeing, is also the movie that - to this day - has had the most profound effect on my life. That movie, is Steven Spielberg's breakthrough motion picture - JAWS. The movie as an art form was still in it's infancy. At the time, which was 1975, no movie had ever made more than the once-in-a-lifetime epic, Gone With The Wind. I say once in a lifetime, because one of the main reasons it did so well was that it was one of the first color movies of it's time.

No movie ever really compared to GWTW in terms of following, sales, or longevity. That was, until JAWS opened and began a staggering romp up and up the box office scales until it not only topped GWTW's sales, but utterly smashed it's record. The first "Block-buster" movie was born (the term meant your movie "busting into" the "block" of movies which had been in the top 5 all time box-office earnings).

JAWS not only was a phenominon in terms of earnings, but also was shocking in it's graphic and gory depictions of what shark attacks looked like. No movie I had ever seen (I was 5) had ever had blood or gore or anything like what I was seeing - what almost ANYONE who was anyone alive at the time saw.

This wasn't a fringe horror movie, or some cult classic - this was something everyone went to go see, and it was visually and emotionally intense and, in some cases, traumatic.

From the beginning of the movie, I was shivering. The scene where the girl is swimming, and the great white shark kills her, while not graphic in any way, was literally chilling. My blood ran cold as the woman was dragged through the water screaming "IT HURTS IT HURTS OH GOD!".

Steven Spielberg had me captivated. As the movie unfolds, you start to see evidence that this shark isn't going away, and each attack, the directory brings you closer to the action. What had started out as a hard to see night-time attack (which occured almost entirely off camera, since the "action" happened underwater) suddenly was a man spitting blood into the camera as a shark sliced him in half, and dragged him screaming underwater.

I was so terrified, as were my parents. They failed to see how scared I was. I was curled into a ball in my seat, watching the movies through my fingers - hands covering my face for those critical - super scarey moments when the music jolts and the waters turned red).

When Brody and Cooper go out in a yacht and find Ben Garner's boat, Cooper dives underwater to see the wreckage. Peering into a craggy hole in the ship's hull, Ben Garner's unlucky head rolls out, and a sudden burst of intensely loud music crashes in. I lost it. I ran, screaming out of the auditorium, and up the stairway into a bathroom, and hid in the stalls. In my fright, I misread the sign, and ended up in the woman's bathroom.

My family looked for me, and my Mom found me, and took me back into the theater, where she and my father began to watch the rest of the movie. I was floored! I hid from the screen, but soon, my curiosity, and love for movies, crept in, and I was watching the rest. In the end, when Captain Quint gets pulled down as JAWS devours him, I peed my pants. I was so ashamed on the way home, i didn't know what to say.

Because of that movie, I was afraid of the dark. For some reason, I found myself fearing - even on dry land - that a shark would come out and kill me from any dark shadow. Needless to say, it was extremely hard for me to learn how to swim; but once the catfish and trout in the San Juaquin river failed to attack or eat me, I felt safe.

In fact, I let the fear of sharks slowly out of my mind, and eventually (temporarily) overcame my fear of the dark and of shark-infested waters.

Years had gone by, and I went off to college. While there, I grew bored from loneliness, so I took up surfing. I surfed for 3 years - most of my college years. One day, however, changed my love of surfing forever.

I was out in Pismo, body boarding on a foam board, when I was pummeled by a deep and quite unexpected set of waves. While underwater, I choked, and felt like I could have drowned. And the worse part was, I felt something brush up against my leg.

I quickly got out - in fact, I am surpised I didn't pull a Bugs Bunny, and run along the surface of the ocean. I dried off and left, still shaking. Later that night, on the news, I heard that 5 miles up the coast from where I was, a man had been bitten in half by a rogue great white shark. He survived by somehow drifting to shore, and from there, he crawled up the sandy beach, up the rocky cliff, and along the highway 101 until a trucker found him, and took him to the hospital.

It was enough to remind me of the childhood fears I had about JAWS coming to get me. But I was a young adult at the time, and was, for the most part, able to overcome my fear. Even stil, I sold my wetsuit and my boards. I never surfed again.

Years later, I had put aside my fear, and went wading in a beach up in Sausalito called Muir Beach. I was standing waste deep, when my friend, Kevin, pointed out (not knowing my phobia) a sign that read "Careful, Great Whites have been seen in the area, do not go past your hips". I got out as fast as I could, and I have never gone in past my kneecaps since.

So yeah, I am sort of afraid of sharks.