There's a Shark in the Swimming Pool

This was my final essay for an online English class I took this summer. It was supposed to be a causal analysis essay in which you analyze the cause and effect of something. In this case, I'm analyzing my irrational fear of water, fish, and sharks. Feel free to critique. Enjoy :)


All of my friends know how to swim. I’m the only one who doesn’t. Swimming in pools as a kid meant that I sat on the steps or only waded where I could touch the floor. I love boat rides and being on the lake, but I’m terrified of fish and being in lake water makes me feel vulnerable. Therefore, going to the lakes consists mostly of my friends doing water sports and swimming in the middle of the lake while I stay safely sprawled out on the boat. My irrational fear of fish and being in lakes was caused by growing up with holes in my eardrums and not knowing how to swim.
When I was a baby, I had tubes in my ears. As a toddler, I took swimming lessons in the baby pool like most kids do, learning to float and doggy paddle. After the tubes fell out, they left holes in my eardrums. I couldn’t go underwater and didn’t like how earplugs felt, so I convinced my mom to take me out of swimming lessons right before graduating to the big pool. One time, as I clung to the side of a hotel pool, kicking my feet behind me, I lost my grip and slipped underwater. The deafening sound of silence terrified me and I had never felt more vulnerable. Even though I could have touched the pool floor, my panic held me underwater, trying to find the surface or even the wall. When I finally grabbed hold of the side, my ears had filled with water. The rest of my day was spent avoiding the pool and trying to shake the water from my ears. I thought for sure I should have drowned. My 5-year-old self was traumatized.
My fear of being underwater caused my even more irrational fear that if water wasn’t going to kill me, sharks were. I have a vivid memory of being in the public pool across the street from my childhood home with two neighbor kids. It was a hot, slow day and we were some of the only people there. I sat on the pool steps, away from the threat of drowning in the shallow end or of fish suddenly appearing and eating my feet. I splashed my feet around in the shallow water while my two friends swam freely in the deep end. Suddenly, I heard their 7-year-old voices singing the theme song to “Jaws” as they swam over and pretended to be sharks, laughing and nipping at my feet with their hands. I screamed and ran out of the pool onto the hot, dry cement. Embarrassed, I laughed it off, but didn’t go back in the pool for the rest of the day. After that day, I spent the better part of my childhood believing that sharks were lurking in the shadowy parts of the pool. Even into my teenage years, the image of a shark would drift into my mind and I would instinctively lift my feet off the floor in a panic until I realized I was in a public pool in North Dakota and nowhere even near the ocean.
Even more unreasonable than a shark showing up in a pool, I grew up afraid that a shark would attack me in my shower. I used to have these ridiculous images in my head of a shark emerging through the bathtub floor and gobbling me up. I’m mostly over that fear because of its obvious impossibility. However, I was recently at a friend’s lake cabin when this fear unexpectedly resurfaced. I was showering and had my eyes closed while I was washing soap off of my face. I suddenly felt vulnerable. When I opened my eyes I realized that the color of the walls were the color of the ocean. The color of the shower curtain became a shark’s back and the white of the bathtub his belly. I panicked and had to stop and tell myself that there was no way a shark could be in the upstairs of a lake cabin in Bemidji, MN.
One would assume after the holes in my eardrums closed up around age 13 that I would overcome my fears. This was not the case. My fear of sharks in pools and showers caused me to fear sharks in lakes. If I open my eyes underwater in a pool, I can see pretty clearly to the other side. However, in a lake, all I see is murky shadows. My feeling of vulnerability underwater is amplified in a lake because I can’t see what’s in the water around me. While my illogical fear of lake sharks isn’t as big as it used to be, my fear of killer fish is. Even when I let my feet hang off the boat at any friend’s lake, I imagine what my feet look like from the view of a fish. Then, I picture the fish maliciously attacking me from the depths of the water. I still can’t even sit near a fish that’s mounted on someone’s wall because I think it will come to life for the sole purpose of harming me.
If I would have learned to swim at a young age I probably wouldn’t have these irrational fears. Innocent things like neighbor kids goofing off in the pool or me unexpectedly going underwater have culminated in me believing that giant fish are out to get me and sharks are lurking in showers. I wish I wasn’t so afraid of what’s living in water. My goal is to learn how to swim, but I keep putting it off because of my fears. However, if I knew how to swim, I may not feel so helpless in water and probably wouldn’t be as afraid. Whether or not I learn how to in the near future, I know for sure that I’m making my kids learn how to swim.