Saturday, July 26, 2008

Lesson from the beach

When you and your husband are standing waist-deep in the ocean with your nearly-4-year-old son and you spot the dorsal and caudal fins of a shark 10 yards away, don’t say the word "shark" aloud as you swiftly exit the water. The kid will fixate on the shark the rest of the day, wondering about its size and retelling the story of its spotting until by bedtime that shark is a monstrous image consuming all of his weary mind. And if you and the husband were planning a late-night retreat to the hot tub you’ll have to forget about it, because he’ll be stuck lying beside the still-awake boy in his bed, where he'll spend more than an hour fending off sharks, which it turns out (if the boy’s any authority on the matter) are perfectly capable of emerging from the ocean and crawling into beach houses at night.

4 comments:

shannon said...

Oh goodness!! Just back from the beach, having swum way out into water where no one else was swimming, I am also dreaming of your shark crawling into my room! Yikes!
Here's another tip: if you have recurring nightmares that your child falls overboard in a row boat in the ocean and is eaten by sharks, don't EVER tell your child. (can you guess who's mom did that and who the scared child is who loves to swim in water where no one else is?)

Annie Addington said...

Don't you start having shark nightmares too! I don't think the shark was that big -- just enough to make me nervous...But if you can trade our crawling shark for your recurring nightmare it might be a good swap.

Tina said...

How big was it?
Simon is fixated about sharks in the swedish water and asked if they were small and made a measurement of about half an inch.
I do have personal nightmares of gigant squids though but are not telling me kids about them

Annie Addington said...

It was no Jaws. All we saw were the two ominous fins. Maybe the thing was 3 to 4 feet long. Rob says 3 feet, so maybe I'm prone to telling to telling big shark stories. Probably a minor shark, but it gave the jitters in any case.