The original Jaws profoundly affected the vacation culture for decades and I can testify.
In or about 1990 Mama Llama, baby girl Llama (then age 6) and I were hosting my wife’s niece, a beanpole skinny, cute, hyperactive, precious but very easily spooked girl of 10 for July 4th weekend. Then as now, we lived about ten minutes from the Gulf of Mexico (!) public beaches.
Mama was basking on the beach while I entertained the kids about 75 feet offshore as they floated in a rubber dinghy about four feet long. Surf was smooth to moderate with the occasional big breaker. I was in chest deep water, holding onto the little boat to keep it steady. The game was to make the girls face away from the breakers and have a big OH WOW EEK! adventure when a big breaker would occasionally crash in, nearly swamping the SS Minnow and drenching us all. This went on nicely for 15 or 20 minutes until a disturbing sound registered in my lizard brain. It was Mama calling my name with a certain tone I had come to recognize after 20 years of marriage. I couldn’t hear distinctly because of the surf noise and hundreds of kids and adults clamoring, All that was missing was Chief Brody.
I looked at Mama’s spot on the beach only to see her unoccupied towel and our cooler beside it. Then I found her standing all the way down to the edge of the water, staring at me and indicating with gestures “look over to your right.” Without telling the kids, who were faced away fron me as the game required, I scanned the water to my right . . . and saw that which I had been dreading since first seeing Jaws in 1975 - a sleek, gray, BIG triangle, sliding through the water. It sas only about 100 feet away and heading gradually in my general direction. Son of a bitch. I could imagine if not actually feel those sharp white teeth clamping on my right leg and my femoral artery gushing away.
Fearing the wrath of Mama more than any creature in the universe, I decided if I was checking out on that day, I would try my best to get my passengers back to shore. I started to walk toward shore and pushing the boat before me, keeping my eyes on the gray triangle of certain death, which was now closer to us than we were to the shore. The girls immediately began to protest, “Awwww! Noooo! We don’t wanna go in yet!” I said something lame about needing to rest a minute. Niece Llama chose that moment to look at my face. She saw where I was looking and with the uncanny radar sense of a preadolescent, looked to our right and saw . . . IT.
Quick as a flash, she stood up in the boat, pointed with a long skinny arm and screamed “SHHHAAAAAARRRRRKK!!”
and jumped rihht out of the boat into the fucking water! My attention was now divided between protecting my baby, my wife’s favorite niece and somehow moving closer to dry land. I reached out and grabbed my niece, who was wiggling like a sack of squirming eels, told my daughter to look for her mama and paddle but STAY IN THE BOAT.
Guys, it was nightmarish. My feet couldn’t find solid purchase, waves were smacking me from behind, salt water was in my eyes, the crazy niece was screaming for her life
and a fucking real shark was now 20 feet away, swimming in a slow arc but on a trajectory I didn’t like.
At this point other beachgoers, swimmers. kids and adults in and out of the water, were making for land. Finally, FINALLY I made enough headway to get more of my body out of the water than in. Mama rushed out, grabbed the bow of the little boat and pulled our baby to safety as I hauled the shivering shaking niece to the beach.
I turned and saw what turned out to be a seven foot sand shark glide through the water where we had just been, the shark calmly zigging and zagging, feeding on bait fish or something until his dorsal fin went under and he was out of my life, thank God!
Jaws the movie made me find strength and jacked me full of adrenaline that day, I tell you what. For about three very tense minutes that day, a great white shark terrified this guy in the coastal waters of Alabama but all he ate were a few shad.