Thing-a-day.com

The movie Jaws was released in 1975.  One year after my birth.  I never saw the movie until probably 1989 or 1990.  That didn’t matter, I saw the poster.  I heard John Williams’ minor chords, probably from the time I was about 5.  I think it was re-released around 1980 at the Oswego Cinema or maybe at the drive-in or maybe by then channel 11, the Canadian station was airing.  Like I said, I never saw it then.  And like I said, that didn’t matter. 

I grew up swimming in my Grandparents’ pool, until I was 5 and that’s about the time I saw the poster for Jaws and that’s when sharks became a real and imminent danger in my life.  I stopped getting into the water for fear the great white might just shimmy his way up the drain.  Lake Ontario became officially off limits to me as explaining to a 6 year old that sharks don’t live in fresh water is like a tourist understanding the subway announcements.  All I heard was blah blah blah Sharks will eat you blah blah blah.  It got so bad with me that baths and showers were to be feared.  This shark was wiley.  You don’t know what he could do.  Like I said, I hadn’t seen the movie, but whatever I had going on in my imagination was far, far worse than anything Peter Benchley could have come up with. 

This was problematic not to me, but to my mother really.  She couldn’t understand a child going to the pool, in a bathing suit and then spending the entire time doing laps around the pool.  Occasionally I might get close enough to dip a toe in the water and that’s when either my brother Eric or maybe my cousin Jim would scream out “SHARK!!!!!”  And that would start the cycle anew.   Usually after some tears and hiding in my mother’s lap until she did her best to convince me that no, there was no man eating fish in the deep end on 8th Street. 

My parents were also extremely courageous at this time because almost every week of every summer they would declare a “beach day.”  This would work us into such a fury of excitement that I’m sure it could be heard all the way out to Scriba.  They would pack us, towels, coolers and beach chairs into our car, sometimes with a few extra kids and drive us 30 miles out to Southwick Beach.  At that time 30 miles might as well have been 3000.  It was surely going to take us an entire week to get there.  We better pack a book or two and a snack and a game and stop touching me!  Stop Touching Me!  STOP………TOUCHING……….ME……….MOMMMMM!  There’s no not touching each other when you’ve got 5-7 kids in the back seat of a Bronco.  To this day I’m amazed my parents didn’t just pull over on Rte 104 East and leave us there.  We would get to Southwick about 45 minutes (what felt like 45 hours) later, after passing all the silos, which had to be pointed out to me because for some reason I was obsessed with them, the Llama farm and listening to one of my many past life stories.  From the time I could speak, which I’m told was pretty much as soon as I came out of the womb, I started telling anyone who would listen about my former lives.  My life as a cow was a favorite, but not to be overshadowed by the intense detail I would give to my brothers and my parents recollecting stories about when I was older than them and a boy. 

Ok, so we would get there, unpack the car and get to “our spot.”  It was way down away from everyone else, away from the lifeguards and the campers and pretty much everyone.  It was like our own private beach.  We Crouchers reigned supreme there.  We grilled Garafolo’s hot dogs and burgers and ate Charles’s Chips.  The food of Kings.  And from the time I was 5 until I was about 8  every time my mother sent me out into the water with my brothers as soon as I got to about knee level Eric started in.  “Hey, was that a shark?”  I spent most of my time in the water with my arms wrapped around Ed or Mark’s neck, clinging on for dear life because surely, the sharks would not attack Ed or Mark.  They were too strong for shark attacks.  Let the great whites feast on Eric I thought.  He’s over there battling waves, he might as well be a surfer or an injured seal flopping around like that. 

Eventually I got over this fear and came to understand the difference between fresh water, chlorinated water, bath water and salt water and the inhabitants of each.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Some time in the 1980’s some nitwit, some total jerk, some complete asshole decided to unleash a shark in Lake Ontario.  My father says Dave Eggleston who was a conservation officer caught it out in Fair Haven, probably within a week of it’s release.   I’m not so sure.  Even now, when I take my nieces and nephews out to flat rock to go swimming, my heart rate elevates just a little. 

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