Why Kan’t Doc Zoe Write?

There are 3 things I fear – snakes, sharks, and apparently heights as well.

I never thought I was scared of heights until that time I learned to wall climb and reached the overhang. I chickened out early. I don’t think this fear is pathologic cause I keep going at it again.

Next were snakes which I tried to overcome some weeks ago. But more on that some other time and in another blog post.

But today, it was about sharks.

I never planned this, but it was on the same day when we went to (other sites here which I can’t disclose yet).

Honestly, I wanted to be the first one in to dive. (That says a lot of my supposed fear). But I also wanted to observe how to act in the water with the reef sharks.

Burton, our guide, assured us that they are not known to bite… yet. So he just jumped in and swam. When I did, I saw a shark behind me. I froze. However, I remembered sharks smell fear. I don’t know if it applies to reef sharks, but I decided to play cool, like, “whaddup hommie?” So the shark swam past me. But the next thing that happened was that the fishes swam away suddenly and in unison. To me that signalled an attack. And that scared me immensely. But since people were around me and I was still close to the boat, I decided to again play cool, like “Dawg!!!” And they all resumed swimming the way they were before the big sharks and the big fishes with a big rubber-footprint-like thingies on their heads kinda attacked them.

At one particular instance when I was now a bit further from the boat, there were some 10 sharks in front of me, below me and behind me (not actually surrounding me). They were big ones with those cute little fishes that stick to them because of some symbiotic relationship, if I remember correctly (college years was way behind me). The fear and anxiety just got washed away upon seeing them. I guess by this time, too, I have already acclimatized with them around. Sharks are actually beautiful. I was just star-strucked.

So we all went home that afternoon thinking how bad asses we are now.

Fo shizzle.

This post is tagged fear, reef sharks