Monday, February 21, 2011

Why yes, we are going to need a bigger boat. Why do you ask?

Jaws-589x450.jpg


This week Lily decided that she wanted to study all about sharks. I love sharks! How exciting! We have been using measuring tapes to show the length of a great white (average length 23 feet) and had to use two measuring tapes to get to 40 feet- the largest recorded length of great white.

All of this shark chatter led Lily to beg to be allowed to watch Jaws. Jaws is my second favorite movie. I love Roy Schieder. I love Richard Dreyfuss. Most of all though, I love people getting eaten by sharks. It is the most delicious kind of terrible thrill.

This does not mean that I thought that having Lily watch Jaws was a good idea, but I knew that if one of my children could handle Jaws, it was Lily.

And handle it she did. The first girl getting eaten, the boy getting eaten, the head popping out of the boat- no problem.

It was the dog getting eaten that got to her.

"Why did he have to eat the dog?" Lily whimpered.

"Ummm. He was hungry? Don't worry though, I can guarantee you that there has never been a case of a pug being eaten by a shark." I told her.

This did not comfort her for some reason, so instead I explained about the magic of cinematography, the animal actor union and the mechanical shark. Finally she fell asleep, not so much reassured as desperate to escape my mind numbing descriptions of 1970's shark puppetry.

This morning she awoke refreshed and ready for a fresh wave of whining which included a demand that she be allowed to watch the end of Jaws. Luckily, what she lacks in sense, she possesses in cute.

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

You? Love sharks? You who would not get on a whale watching SHIP because the sharks were offshore?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

anne57 said...

I love sharks, too! And snakes! And Tigers! However, my love is conditional. I love all of these critters on screens or behind glass at the zoo. Although ever since I read a Reader's Digest article about a deadly cobra escaping into the ceiling of the Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo (while it was full of visitors, whom they could not tell about the cobra because if they panicked and started running the likelihood of the cobra biting someone would greatly increase) I prefer the snakes solely on a screen.
And Jaws…….. is very close to "The Wizard of Oz" as my # 1 movie fave. If I flip on the TV and it's on I am compelled to watch the remainder of it from whatever point I came in on.