Landshark

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I saw a guy walking around with a shark today. 

Really – an honest to goodness shark. On a pier just outside Atlantic City .  

I was sitting there, cleaning up from the beach after a two hour afternoon power tan, when this older dude walks by with what I thought at first was a very realistic looking toy shark.  

I thought to myself – that actually looks like I real shark – if I hadn’t had the shit scared out of me as a kid by JAWS, I’d probably walk over there and take a closer look. 

Then, the guy walked back my way, reached over, grabbed a shopping cart that was like three feet away from me on against the rail overlooking the ocean below, and stuck the toy sharks head up against the carts handlebars, when the toy shark’s front jaws suddenly bit down HARD and clamped on the grips. 

Deep Thoughts From the Shallow End…

My next thought – was, WOW it’s electronic - followed by the sudden, immediate and shocking  realization that I had some crazy ass old fisherman and a live shark within striking distance of my pretty face.

My immediate instinct was to scream like a little girl, but considering at that very moment a bunch of little girls came running over to check out the little shark, I thought it might make for a bad inappropriately unfitting metaphor.

So I did what I do best – tried to look like I was cool with hanging with one crazy old fisherman, a bunch of squeeling 8 years olds and a 2 and a half foot blue shark that looked like he’d fit right in at the local supermarket pushing a cart filled to the brim with  chicken of the sea. 

The little girls insisted he put the shark down on the wood pier, (about a foot and a half from MY two feet) where they proceeded to shriek and pet the sharks "tail" ( or it dorsal fin?) and I tried my best to stifle the involuntary facial tic that suddenly came over me.

It’s interesting though – I’m a big believer in the idea of serendpity - those amazing moments in your life that sort of seemed destined to happen, that defy  a logical explanation, that seem to suggest that there is FAR more to the universal patterns and fabric than our naked and foolish eyes can see. 

 This wasn’t one of those moments though, and I briefly considered punting the shark off of the pier and back to the ocean from whence he came.

I worried though, that I might be swarmed by the crowd of little girls, and while they were small, altogether I was fairly sure in their rage they could have taken me down and thrown me over too - leaving me stuck like chuck in the 8 feet of water without a spear gun, and going mano a mano with a 30 inch blue shark with an unusually small nose.

 

So I like I have done at so many other critical junctions of my life, I did nothing.

Thankfully – as these thoughts swarmed through my cranium, the crazy old fisherman picked the shark back up, told everyone he had to throw him back, and proceeded to do exactly that. 

Of Mice & Men

There’s a lesson in here somewhere – on manhood – on an adventurers soul, on the poetic nature of  spirit in the wild – old man and the sea and all of that stuff - I’m just not sure what it is. 

I did – however, what most grown men would do in this situation – I walked away and called my mother.