Steven Spielberg’s JAWS came out in 1975. I saw the film in Gloucester with my good friend Andy Kornfeld. The next day we went to Good Harbor Beach. Families were playing in the sand. No one was in the sea. Andy and I tested it with our toes. The water temperature was perfect. We both laid at the water’s edge and surveyed the mirror-smooth surface of the ocean for shark fins.
“Do you see any?”
I shook my head.
Both of remembered the scenes of mayhem from the movie
Neither of us went swimming that day.
We were not fools, only the fooled.
Sharks don’t attack people.
And if they do, they usually spit us out, because we taste so bad.
Still there is no getting gummed by a shark
And then Bill Murray drove a tank in STRIPES.