"Extreme Shark Diving"

It's Shark Week again, reaffirming my distrust of the ocean.

I'm not a big fan of being submerged in the ocean. I got caught in a riptide in NC when I was 14 when I was boogie boarding with a friend. It's like swimming on a treadmill. I have no idea how long it took us to get back to the beach. An older man pulled us in, and to this day I have no idea who he was. Wherever you are Sir, thanks, I owe you one. It's still easily the scariest moment of my life. The beach police came and took a statement, and later when we were back inside we saw tv reports of shark sightings in the area.

We were from upstate NY, and had no earthly clue we were supposed to swim parallel to the shore. Where we're from the greatest aquatic dangers are swimming through someone else's pee in the lake, stepping on some jerk's littered broken beer bottle, tripping over a submerged tree stump or being mauled by mosquitos(or worse yet, losing your cooler over the side of the boat when you're going full speed.) Needless to say, it left me with a dislike of being in deep water. Actually, I didn't completely go in the ocean again til last October when I went snorkling in St. Thomas (which is, by the way, The Most Beautiful Place Ever.)

I'm watching a show about Extreme Shark Feeding...err, diving. As in, shark photographers are getting out of the cage and swimming alongside great white sharks. That gave me a moment of pause. Excuse me? As I'm aware, the cage is only for a bit of protection anyway. The sharks could get in if they wanted to, but why test fate? 12-foot sharks with enough bite force to keep most normal people away.There was one diver, a former Cosmo model-turned wild animal photographer that was diving with a broken arm and she was whining about not being able to grab on the dorsal fin and ride along with the shark like the other divers had. It was like watching a bad faux-documentary and I was waiting for someone to get chewed on. Sharks may be beautiful creatures, but this is clearly a case of "Better you than me."

I have my reasons for not wanting to dive with sharks. In the case of me versus the sharks, let's think about it.

Who's bigger? SHARK.

Who's faster? SHARK.

Who eats things that are still breathing? SHARK.

Who is constantly underestimated? ME.

Who's scarier? LIZA MINELLI...oops, I mean SHARK.

Who has an entire week of Discovery Channel programming devoted to them? SHARK.

In the most basic of comparisons-- it's 5-1, in the shark's favor. I'm also lacking the nerve to allow sharks to "test" me. Fuck that noise. A bite is a bite, and once I'm below the water, they're higher on the food chain. I understand that I have a better chance of being hit by a car, butI have no urge to dangle myself in the water like bait, and no chain mail suit is going to change my mind. They may not be mindless killers, and they are smarter than people may think-- but that's it right there. If it can decide to kill me because it feels like it, I don't need spider sense to tell me to avoid the situation. Down in the ocean, I am the equivalent of a 3-day old still-blind kitten facing a pack of methamphetamine-crazed bikers. No thanks. I'll be the one at the water's edge with the sunburnt nose, avoiding the washed up jellyfish.

So more power to you, crazy shark divers. Go ahead, swim around with chum-filled suits and cattle prods if you want, get the pictures, and I'll watch the shows. It's like watching the Crocodile Baby Dangler-- there's always the knowledge that he could lose a hand. So, don't act all shocked and angry if they bite you. Do, however, try and get it on camera-- you know, for next year's Shark Week.