An enduring classic...

Rating: 10/10 (24 June 2013)

Little wonder that JAWS has become the quintessential summer movie: it's big and scary and a boatload of fun- STILL, after all these years. It wasn't until I migrated South that I caught my first glimpse of a real-life shark. It was an overcast, rainy day, and The Wife suggested we go to the beach. I don't "do" the beach ("Drowning," as Roy Scheider's Chief Brody explains in the movie.); fell asleep on the beach one day and woke up three hours later with golfball-size blisters on my shins. But I gave in and we went. I was sitting on the beach, watching as She swam out into the choppy waters. She rolled over, belly up, and started drifting toward a nearby pier. I was watching, not really interested, when something broke the surface of the water on the far side of my wife. It was a momentary thing, but I clearly saw the arched back- and the fin. I stood up and shouted a warning. She waved me off and continued to drift toward the pier. I followed, searching the surface of the ocean for another tell-tale sign of you-know-what. When she finally came ashore, I told her what I'd seen. She argued that I was just lying to scare her out of the water so we could go home. She went back into the water and I spent the rest of that day watching for the attack I was convinced would come. There was no attack- but, the very next day, not one but THREE sharks were hooked by fishermen fishing off of the pier toward which my wife had drifted. After learning of this, she decided to never again take a dip in the ocean. I could sympathize: after seeing JAWS, I vowed NEVER to get in the ocean. If Man were meant to swim, he'd have fins...