The Surprising Influence of Sharks

“When are you going to get a haircut!?”

The ship violently rocked from side to side.

“You would say something like that,” Eddie replied. He carefully readjusted the rubberband that secured the knot of his hair bun.

‘Eddie’ or rather ‘Edward’ was the by-product of high society. The kind of wealth that you and I and the other 99% of the population will never enjoy.

Author’s footnote: to 100% of the 1% that may be reading this. Please do not feel excluded. You will love this story too. I promise.

I know what you’re thinking: a bead-wearing, man-bun sporting, billionaire hippie? Well, that just doesn’t sound right. (Did I mention he was fully clad in baggy white linen?) But I humbly implore you to think about your own lot in life. Does it differ from that of your parents? Maybe, maybe not. But Eddie’s did. Or maybe he just wished it did.

“I just got this dry cleaned!” Sylvia cursed as a large swath of ocean water crashed over the bow, a few small drops landing on the leg of her apparently recently pressed pantsuit.

“It’s just water, man…” Eddie said, noticing her displeasure.

“Stop talking like a damn hippie! You know you used to be a ‘suit’, just like me. You were a wealth manager when we got married, for God’s sake.”

That was true. Edward was a wealth manager when they met. And he was even a wealth manager up until the time they had their second kid. But then Edward discovered yoga. And then, on a search for a cure to his athlete’s foot, which he got from walking barefoot in the country club locker room after racquetball, Edward discovered Ayuverdic medicine. And then Edward became “Eddie”. And Sylvia became disgusted.

“Anyway babe, I’m just here to see the whales… such beautiful creatures, aren’t they? Speaking of which, where are they? We’ve been on this cruise for almost an hour..!” Eddie lamented. Perhaps the apple didn’t fall that far from the ancestral money tree.

***

“Look over there, I think I saw one!” Danny said, yanking at Cody’s sleeve, leading him towards the sturdy, white iron rungs of the boat’s railing. He was lying.

Danny was a dick. But he wasn’t born that way. Sometime after Eddie discovered “yoga” and “Ayuverda” and after Danny walked in on him doing “therapeutic massage” on his yoga instructor, Danny just got angry. And for some reason, sometimes kids displace their anger. Not in the direction it’s deserved, but rather in the direction of, say, their younger brother Cody.

“Where?!” Cody asked excitedly.

“Righhhhhhhhht overrrr… there!” Danny replied, pushing his brother in front of him, pressing his chest against the railing. Cody eagerly scanned the horizon.

“Ewwwwww, you jerk!” Cody squealed, feeling a wet finger twisting inside his ear canal.

Cody instantly felt guilty. He hated bad words. And to Cody, jerk was one of those words.

Cody wanted nothing more in this world than to be Danny’s best friend. A title his brother would never willingly accept. In the absence of his brother, Cody had befriended Jenny, his pet snapping turtle. But sadly, much like Danny, Jenny didn’t seem to accept the title either. Jenny seemed to prefer lettuce and nipping at fingers more than Cody’s affection.

***

“Can you please check on the kids; I have to answer this important work email!” Sylvia pleaded. Her thumbs were moving with hurricane force on the phone’s display while she cursed the very day that “some snot-nosed internet dweeb” decided to implement autocorrect. Sylvia was not a patient person.

“Settle down babe, the kids can take care of themselves! Did you know at the age of thirteen, the Buddha left his home to—”

“He was TWENTY-NINE, you dolt!” she replied, not bothering to look up from her phone. This was an important email, you know.

Sylvia was not a “spiritual person”, but she was an exemplary student. And she had not been willing to get anything less than a perfect score on her final exam in her religious studies class.

“What are you doing! They don’t allow outside beverages on the boat!” Sylvia shouted as she saw Eddie pull a large bottle out from his leather satchel, eagerly twisting off the top and taking a big swig.

“What’s the big deal? It’s just Kombucha! They never offer it at these types of things,” Eddie responded. Sylvia raised her head towards the sky in anguish before scuttling off to the other side of the deck. She stared off into the cloudy horizon.

Beverages had become just one of many sources of contempt between them in recent years.

***

Danny and Cody bickered as white-caps formed across the surface of the deep blue ocean beneath them.

Danny gasped as he saw something circling in the water a few meters out from the front edge of the boat.

“Oh my God—check that out!” Danny exclaimed.

“No way. I know you’re just gonna give me another wet-willy!” Cody replied.

“No, for real this time…look!” he said, extending his arm, his finger pointing towards the shark who was now criss-crossing its way closer to the boat. Cody crossed his arms tightly, defiantly pressing his back firmly against the railing.

Danny planted his hands on Cody’s shoulders and aggressively began to flip him around towards the water. At that exact moment, a large wave smacked across one side of the boat, tilting the boat at a forty-five angle.

“Cody!” Danny screamed in horror. Time moved in a vacuum.

It wasn’t Danny’s fault. Okay, maybe it was a little bit his fault. Danny was a dick, but not a homicidal one.

It’s just that some boat engineer had decided it was a good idea to place a 6 foot gap in the railing to make it easier to load and unload passengers. And, to be fair to the engineer, there was a latch where a chain could be draped and attached across the opening. But unfortunately for Cody, it was the deckhand’s first day on the job. And when you’re a sixteen-year-old boy, you’re more interested in gawking at the most beautiful, large-chested woman in a pantsuit you’ve ever seen than double checking that pesky safety checklist the captain handed you before departure.

And now, all of the Ayuverdic medicine and dry cleaned pantsuits and wet willies in the world couldn’t undo the actions of one pea-brained shark. Or those of an older brother who had wanted nothing more in the world than to be his parents’ best friend.

***