A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

My father the card

Someone challenged me on my assertion (made more than once) that the movie Jaws scared me so much as a child I wouldn't take a bath. They claimed such a statement was ridiculous, since everyone - even an 8-year old like myself who once swallowed an entire bottle of Flintstone Chewables - knows sharks don't swim in fresh water and, more importantly, they can't squeeze their way up the plumbing to get you.

First, there are so freshwater sharks. Bull sharks have been known to swim up freshwater rivers, and have been found over 2,000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. One variety lives in Lake Nicaragua, giving me an idea for the next Jaws sequel, featuring a group of people fleeing the Sandinistas who stumble across a giant predator while crossing the lake to escape (they're eventually saved by Oliver North and Eugene Hasenfus). In any event, the saltwater argument doesn't...hold water, to coin a phrase.

As for swimming up the pipes, well, no kidding. But you're mistaken to think that 8-year olds are able to discern warm and fuzzy reality from the cold and irrational terror so integral to their existence. To them, sharks can lurk in swimming pools, vampires can hide in the fireplace, and your dog could easily become possessed by Satan, just to name a few examples from my own childhood.

Why don't parents just reason with their children, you ask? This might work, and it's something I'll probably try on my own kids, but I couldn't personally speak to its effectiveness, because my father preferred another tactic: sadism.

I should point out that I didn't even see the movie Jaws until several years after it's theatrical release. I'd read the book, which (once I skipped over all the boring chapters detailing Ellen's tryst with Hooper) did quite an effective job scaring the bejeezus out of me. My mom checked it out, however, and true to my sense of masochism, I grilled her the next day on all the gory details, which she was only too happy to provide.

As if that wasn't enough, the popularity of the film was such that it created a niche market for "shark attack" magazines. I was a big fan of these, spending hours in our local 7-11 enraptured by the hideous pictures and lurid prose. It was all bullshit, of course, but to me it only cemented by belief that anyone stupid enough to enter the water might as well have been wearing a suit of ground chuck.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn't keen on baths. We didn't have a shower head back then, so that wasn't an option, and bath time soon became an exercise in exasperation for my mother (and an occasion of black terror for yours truly).

Things reached a peak one Saturday at the height of my shark hysteria. The bath was run, and I disrobed with a sense of dread, stalling the inevitable immersion as long as possible. My pre-adolescent imagination swam with images of toothy monsters lurking just beyond the drain, which led not to a narrow galvanized steel pipe, but rather a vast reservoir - McElligott's Pool style - teeming with great whites, makos, and hammerheads. Why, all it would take was one misstep and the porcelain would crack, dumping me into their midst.

After much delaying, and frequent threats from my mother about hosing me off in the front yard (a prospect which shamed me more than it probably should have), I entered the tub. I didn't sit. Oh no. I stood, butt nekkid, over the rapidly cooling water, trying to steel myself for the ordeal of bathing. Mom finally stuck her head in one last time, admonishing me to sit my ass down, as she wasn't going to run any more hot water.

The cruel harpy was right, I decided. Slowly, inexorably, I lowered myself into the water. This wouldn't be so bad, I thought: it's a tub, for crying out loud, and we're 700 miles from the nearest ocean. I'll just wash up real quick and laugh about my folly later.

It was at this point when my father, the arch comedian, who no doubt had been loitering just outside the bathroom for just the moment when my quaking buttocks were about to enter the water, burst into the bathroom. "Look out for the SHARK!" he screamed, simultaneously slamming the door against the tub and turning out the light.

Man's responses to fear are as varied as the delicious varieties of smokeless tobacco, and now - almost 30 years removed from the incident - it's hard for me to remember exactly how I reacted to this thoughtless incursion. I'm pretty sure all that happened was that I leapt clear of the tub, in a gymnastic display that would've made Nadia Comeneci proud, and shrieked, "Daaaaaaad!" All this was lost on my father, however, who was laughing so hard he found it nearly impossible to defend himself from my mother's blows.

Strangely enough, the bathtub phobia went away shortly thereafter. Maybe I finally saw the stupidity of it. More likely it marked the first step on my long road to ultimate revenge against my father. Vengeance against one's parents takes many forms, including underage drinking and poor academic performance, and I'm proud to say I've explored them all. I haven't yet decided if the final trump card will be an unlicensed nursing home or my becoming a Cubs fan. No hurry, Dad's a healthy sort, and there's plenty of time.

But I still don't like baths.