I haven’t talked about sharks yet.  I was saving up to talk about them. Maybe something about shark finning, or overfishing, just the bad reputation sharks have. But I don’t want my first post about sharks to be depressing. Instead, I’m going to make a ridiculous list.

When I was little my family would have movie marathons. First we’d watch the Alien movies,  then we’d watch the  Jaws movies (from the very scary first one and then on to the subsequently less scary/more ridiculous sequels).  Since i’m the youngest child,  I think I might have been too young to be exposed to 1) aliens ripping out of people’s chest cavities 2) sharks being exploded.  I remember fearing that Jaws might be in the bath tub with me, or the swimming pool, or my bed at night. Although  I don’t remember having fears of aliens laying eggs in my chest, I’m going to go ahead and assume I’ve blacked out those nightmares.

So this weekend my sister tells me that she has a fear of sharks. And I remember, Hey, I used to have a fear of sharks too! I mean, getting certified in California where the visibility can be pretty bad, I remember doing skills and wondering if a Great White would just come out of nowhere and I wouldn’t be able to see him until he was THISCLOSE.

I don’t remember a sudden shift, it was gradual. Now, I wish I’d be so lucky. Sharks are awesome.  And they’re being overfished. And killed for sport. And for shark fin soup. There’s not a diver I know who isn’t in support of sharks. So without going into anything more depressing TODAY, I give you my list of

THINGS I’M MORE SCARED OF THAN SHARKS

1) Gremlins, from the movie Gremlins

2) Zombies

3) The dark

4) Snooki

5) Michelle Bachmann

6) Buying hair dye in a box and finding out that someone switched the color, after using it

7) Losing my nephew in a crowd

8) Honda Odysseys and the people who drive them

9) similarly, Hummers and the people who drive them.

10)Fox News

11)Empty Parking Structures

12) Old houses on the east coast (of the US)

13) Someone knocking on my door in the middle of the night

14)Airplane crashes

15) Running out of gas on the freeway (Why do I always let the light come on?!?)

16)watching scary movies alone (again, why do i always do this??)

17) Getting bit by the sheepshead at the aquarium.

18) Having a Moray Eel swim into my BCD at the aquarium.

19) Having my identity stolen.

20) Getting captured and imprisoned in North Korea

21) Getting the Bends

22)Eating shrimp, or an oyster. Yuck.

23)Getting pulled into a secret room at the airport in Bangkok.

24) Coming home and finding out that someone ate my whole secret stash of candy.

25) Paper cuts

26) Heights

27)Falling out of tall trees

28) Jon Stewart going off the air.

29) Homophobes in political office

30) serial killers

31) the Louvre catching on fire

32) Trying to find street parking in Santa Monica

33) Getting a bad hair cut

34) Being forced to read the poetry I wrote when I was 13…Outloud. To friends.

35) The cord on my bungee snapping.

36) My cat Tiburon getting stuck in a tree.

37) Things that live in the Amazon river

38) A Jaws vs. Alien type movie.

39) Gifiti Shots

40) Missing my plane

41) Eating bugs in my sleep

42) Becoming allergic to dairy (i love cheese, milk, ice cream, everything….)

43) Bloody Mary (like, appearing in a mirror, not the drink…)

44) putting in one red sock with my whites in the washing machine and dying everything pink.and finally

 

45) Getting Incepted.

And this list isn’t even complete. More to be continued, when I’m feeling lazy about writing other posts (or inspired about this list, however you look at it!)

Are you scared of Sharks?