Rational fear – there might be sharks in the soup.

Posted: November 25, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My main problem with sharks is that they’re fucking real.

It would be like someone in a fantasy novel asking why you have a problem with fire-breathing dragons.

Sharks are monsters. Total monsters. Perfect monsters.

Monsters to the point that if one were stranded on a mountain top, flailing and gnashing atop a peak with me in close proximity – it’d still be more of a danger to me than I would be to it.

Consider then, how fragile I am when in their natural habitat.

Underwater.

I’m bad at ‘underwater’. I can’t do it.

I won’t do it. Primarily because of the lack of oxygen and potential overabundance of sharks – even at my local heated swimming pool.

That’s why I’m perpetually spinning in my bath tub, ever fearful of the chance there might just be space for a Great White to have snuck up behind me to attack (from behind as they’ve got no class).

That’s why I avoid water, especially the sea but including my local heated swimming pool, as the chance of there being a shark might occasionally be zero, but that’s also suspiciously low a chance and therefore there probably is one. At my local pool, lurking in the deep end.

As far as I know, if not in water (as they tend to be most of the time), they’re otherwise inhabit soup in the Far East. So I also avoid Far Eastern soup, in case it’s a trap.

If, atop that aforementioned mountaintop, I were to kick a shark as hard as I could in its face – the result would be a loud and quiet combination of nothing happening and me having a foot bitten off.

I’m not naturally designed for a mountaintop, compared to a shark’s perfection in the sea, but I don’t think moving the shark to the forests, prairies or office spaces would make much difference.

And they’re not frightened of us, like spiders.

They’re more likely ambivalent, even whilst chewing my leg.

Do sharks chew? Or do they just rip and swallow

I’ve swam in oceans before, but that was inspired by giddy youth and pretty girls, so since losing both those things I look back on those open-sea occasions with bewildered fury as to what the hell I thought I was playing at.

I have the same regret after baths, or swimming in heated pools, below ceilings, with my family and the local community.

Supposedly they’re just curious, but they’re never without hunger. So no – I don’t want to be nudged by a shark, or embezzled by Tiger shark, or defamed by Hammerhead. I want zero interactions with them.

Especially though, I don’t want to be eaten by one.

I don’t want the last thing I see to be the inside of a shark, in chilly water. Headfirst inside a shark, in that context, might be the way to go, rather than foot-first and having to bugger about with the drowning too.

As such, to all shark, please leave me alone.

You’ve got your space, I’ve got mine.

If you’ve got a problem with shipping lanes and ocean pollution, that’s not my fault, and the revenge is not to be taken out on me and my body parts.

Lastly, whilst this make no sense to any sharks reading this, and less so to any other living creatures that can actually read: stay the hell out of my bath!

It feels wrong to end on a sour note, so here’s some credit to them. They might have cold dead eyes, but it does suit the scene they’re aiming for, and would you really rather they had warm, smiling eyes that winked at you as if to say “Nice lower half….it’s mine now.”

Sam