A confession

(I stole this picture from a website on shark attacks. It has come to my attention that some people feel the need to go ape-shit crazy when someone steals their artwork off the freaking internet. This completely confuses me. Put a credential as part of your image or something if you want credit for it. The other day I saw a cold-blooded one--a guy must have just linked to an image on another site. The site where it orignated changed the photo to say "People like me steal images off the internet") These images are such low resolution that you can't print them out and use them for artwork...I just don't get some people who want to just complain about whatever...

Here's my confession. I think I've mentioned at least once if not more times that I didn't go to the ocean until I was in my 20's. Here's why: Jaws. And I am very serious about that. I'm a fast learner.

Every time I swim in the water I think I'm going to be bitten by a shark. Every time I go fishing in the ocean, and I reach down to get a fish out (on such rare occasions...) I think a shark is going to zoom up past the dying fish on my line just to gnaw on me.

It seems like such a bad way to go...

Every time we go to the beach I make sure Fran is in the water a few minutes before I go in (just kidding).

Yes, yes. I know the rational people who say you have better odds of getting struck by lightning or getting hit by a taxi in NYC. Guess what? I kinda stay inside when it's lightning outside...and in NYC--I watch where I'm going. These are called precautions. If you want the bean-counter version of why nobody will ever get bitten, check out the website referenced above. According to it, falling coconuts kill 15 times more people than sharks each year...I say bring on the coconuts.

I think the stats should be adjusted according to the following: When Mike is in the water, multiply the odds by...

I had a brush with death one time. On my honeymoon to Cancun, I went skin diving off the coast of Isla Mujeres. When I got back, my scuba diver friend told me: "Isla Mujeres? Why, didn't you know that's the 'Island of the Sleeping Sharks'? The current there is so strong underwater that it oxygenates their blood, and they can stay still and sleep, which they do under the island."

The brush with death--I came face to face with a razor-toothed, huge, green, moray eel on a reef under the island.

I guess it was nap time for the sharks.

I'm trying very hard not to pass on this phobia to my son, but he's very intuitive and he's already trying to spot sharks in our lakes around Dallas.

Don't laugh--he made me look...