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.
Showing posts with label life lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life lessons. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Paleontology
In 1993, I moved home from college, and stayed with my family for a year. As many may attest, your first year out of school is sort of in limbo. I had went away for school, and being back in the tiny farming community I was from was getting me nowhere fast.
I had spent a lot of time reading, and one of the books I decided to read was Jurrassic park, because that summer, the movie would come out, and I wanted to read it before the movie changed my view of it - the book had been so well recommended.
My stepmother saw my interest in the book and movie, and had heard that nearby (about 30 miles) there was a recent fossil find.
Chowchilla/Madera County had arranged to dig a 35 foot deep 16x16 acre drump just off the Interstate 99. While digging out a new cell, they reached their depth and discovered something that would change my life - at least for the next few years.
To dig so deep, and so much, the city dump team used giant earth-moves, which would scrape the ground and therefore would be able to dig long, flat stretches - which was great for a dump. When the team hit their depth in 26C, they found a long purple streak behind the scraping, and that is when the City Geologist - who sprinted when he heard the knews, suspecting it was something unique - discovered that it was the side-effect of some fossils which were crushed under the giant mechanical shovel.
There was a law that said that either you shut down a dig or you pay to have the fossils removed if you ever find any. So after a few schools got to come in and volunteer (where my step mother heard of this) a team from the School of Paleontology from UC Berkeley came out and set up an official dig, but since this was the sticks, they city strong armed it, and they were forced to extract and evacuate, instead of properly archive and safely remove the fossils.
When I got there, I was a volunteer. It was summer. It was Central Valley Fresno...think 106. I got sunburned badly, but loved it. I knew in my bones I wanted to do this much more than bike around my home town, hang out with my parents, or work at a job.
So, I went out every day for the next 2 years.
I started as a volunteer, and later because I am so talkative, I became a trainer for volunteers, and was occasionally tasked to perform tours for the media, local politicians, and visiting schools. Along the way, I made great friends, became close with the core dig team, and eventually, they offered me a job.
Towards the end of the dig, I didn't want it to end, but it was inevitable; the trash had to go somewhere, and we were out of time. Afterwards, we took the fossils and toured them around California. The best venue was the Fresno State Fair, where we had a 20 day exibit, served 3000 kids for all the local schools, and I trained 45 tourguides, as well as developed the exhibit, authoring the tour, and acting as the main resource for knowledgeable answers about anything that you might see.
The travelling museum had a giant mammoth skull, a T-Rex skull, an Allosaurus forearm, some Sabre-tooth and Scimitar-tooth skulls and teeth, A Mastadon tusk, giant Trilobites, and a slew of the fossils we actually found in our desert excursion.
Now you are probably wondering what we found out there.
750,000 years ago, the San Juaquin valley had a giant mississipi-like river running through it. The detritus from the mountains and hills collected in organic sump-like environments ... wide spans in huge oxbows where the dead would wash up. This was our dig.
We found 15ft tall Columbian Mammoths - with 11 ft long tusks; we found giant 9ft tall ground sloths - yeti-like beings who's giant hook-thumb was a distinct find; 3 toed horses; odd, 3 or 5 toed deer; a Scimitar cat - like a sabre, only thicker in front, and smaller in back; Sabre-teeth cats; A variety of unnamed leg bones, NOT connected to the hip-bones... and a TON of turtle shells...
If you ever get a chance to visit a digsite, or have the ability to visit the Berkeley Campus, you will get a down and dirty view of the history of the earth. It was amazing when I helped - using my paintbrush - to unearth a lower back leg from a species that had NEVER been seen by a human before. Every volunteer had joy as they made small discoveries. It is a unique and enjoyable, and highly relaxing experience.
I had spent a lot of time reading, and one of the books I decided to read was Jurrassic park, because that summer, the movie would come out, and I wanted to read it before the movie changed my view of it - the book had been so well recommended.
My stepmother saw my interest in the book and movie, and had heard that nearby (about 30 miles) there was a recent fossil find.
Chowchilla/Madera County had arranged to dig a 35 foot deep 16x16 acre drump just off the Interstate 99. While digging out a new cell, they reached their depth and discovered something that would change my life - at least for the next few years.
To dig so deep, and so much, the city dump team used giant earth-moves, which would scrape the ground and therefore would be able to dig long, flat stretches - which was great for a dump. When the team hit their depth in 26C, they found a long purple streak behind the scraping, and that is when the City Geologist - who sprinted when he heard the knews, suspecting it was something unique - discovered that it was the side-effect of some fossils which were crushed under the giant mechanical shovel.
There was a law that said that either you shut down a dig or you pay to have the fossils removed if you ever find any. So after a few schools got to come in and volunteer (where my step mother heard of this) a team from the School of Paleontology from UC Berkeley came out and set up an official dig, but since this was the sticks, they city strong armed it, and they were forced to extract and evacuate, instead of properly archive and safely remove the fossils.
When I got there, I was a volunteer. It was summer. It was Central Valley Fresno...think 106. I got sunburned badly, but loved it. I knew in my bones I wanted to do this much more than bike around my home town, hang out with my parents, or work at a job.
So, I went out every day for the next 2 years.
I started as a volunteer, and later because I am so talkative, I became a trainer for volunteers, and was occasionally tasked to perform tours for the media, local politicians, and visiting schools. Along the way, I made great friends, became close with the core dig team, and eventually, they offered me a job.
Towards the end of the dig, I didn't want it to end, but it was inevitable; the trash had to go somewhere, and we were out of time. Afterwards, we took the fossils and toured them around California. The best venue was the Fresno State Fair, where we had a 20 day exibit, served 3000 kids for all the local schools, and I trained 45 tourguides, as well as developed the exhibit, authoring the tour, and acting as the main resource for knowledgeable answers about anything that you might see.
The travelling museum had a giant mammoth skull, a T-Rex skull, an Allosaurus forearm, some Sabre-tooth and Scimitar-tooth skulls and teeth, A Mastadon tusk, giant Trilobites, and a slew of the fossils we actually found in our desert excursion.
Now you are probably wondering what we found out there.
750,000 years ago, the San Juaquin valley had a giant mississipi-like river running through it. The detritus from the mountains and hills collected in organic sump-like environments ... wide spans in huge oxbows where the dead would wash up. This was our dig.
We found 15ft tall Columbian Mammoths - with 11 ft long tusks; we found giant 9ft tall ground sloths - yeti-like beings who's giant hook-thumb was a distinct find; 3 toed horses; odd, 3 or 5 toed deer; a Scimitar cat - like a sabre, only thicker in front, and smaller in back; Sabre-teeth cats; A variety of unnamed leg bones, NOT connected to the hip-bones... and a TON of turtle shells...
If you ever get a chance to visit a digsite, or have the ability to visit the Berkeley Campus, you will get a down and dirty view of the history of the earth. It was amazing when I helped - using my paintbrush - to unearth a lower back leg from a species that had NEVER been seen by a human before. Every volunteer had joy as they made small discoveries. It is a unique and enjoyable, and highly relaxing experience.
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