Why I Hate Water

My favorite line in Jaws is when Brody’s wife (Brody is the chief of police, played by Roy Schneider) tells Hooper (the shark guy) that Brody won’t go near the water. She says that it’s something from his childhood, and she asks him for the clinical name for his phobia. He mumbles one word: “drowning.”

That’s genius.

If my wife asked me why I hate to go in the ocean (or sometimes even lakes and swimming pools, especially at night), I would probably mimic Brody and mumble one word, but my word would be a little different. Mine would be “Jaws.”

I remember seeing Jaws when I was way too young, probably around six or seven years old (what were you thinking, Mom!), and that film freaked me out. Of course, I didn’t even have an opportunity to go to the ocean until I was older, about six years later. And at that time, I didn’t really think about sharks. Yeah, I guess I remembered the movie, but my fun in the ocean overcame whatever residual fears I had. But then I saw the movie several more times, read the book and its sequels, along with other Benchley books, and now I am completely freaked out by the ocean. In fact, it’s only getting worse as I get older.

Yep, I blame Jaws. I know it’s a cliché, but that movie really did make me afraid to go in the water. Like Brody, I have read about the ocean, and I am mystified that they still don’t know what’s down there. Oh, great, yeah, they finally got live footage of a giant squid. Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better. Did you hear that? A GIANT FREAKING SQUID. Those are supposed to only exist in Jules Verne books, not actually in the ocean. But they’re down there, and there could be other despicable things down there.

Here’s my take on it. The ocean is like space. In general, mankind is not meant to be there. We can’t breathe in either environment, and if the technology screws up, we’re dead. There are two main differences between space and the ocean in my eyes. One is that you don’t have people “swimming” in space for fun. Nope, that’s left for professionals. In the ocean, anyone can just jump in, no telling what is under there. And that brings me to the second difference: we have no proof that creepy things live in space. Yeah, it’s scary because it’s space, but we should be relatively certain that nothing is going to fly under us and bite us in the keister. In the ocean, there’s all sorts of creepy stuff under, and like space, they’re not even sure what’s down there!

That’s my view of it, and that’s why, the older I get, the more afraid of the ocean I become. Last time I went out on a boat in the ocean, we jumped off to go snorkeling, and I tool one look under the water and saw that it was so murky that I couldn’t see anything. So I began hyperventilating and jumped back onto the boat. No thanks.

So this one isn’t really a movie review, but it’s inspired by Jaws, which I’m in the middle of rewatching. I will give my complete review later.