It Was Almost A Jaws Moment

This past weekend I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go visit Emily down in McAllen. One of the only perks of having a friend that lives in the valley is the fact that you can take a last minute trip and not spend big bucks to see the beach!

So on Saturday we went to South Padre. It was a nice day on the beach, very relaxing. I made it down to visit her already once this summer. We now have the whole getting to the beach thing down. We pack a lunch, bring chairs and umbrellas and an ice chest.

But I didn't quite bring enough sunblock. I got the upper portions of my body, but by the time I got to my legs I had run out of sunblock. Well, besides the ten speckles that came and landed on my right leg. But I figured I would either be under the umbrella or in the water, and either way my legs wouldn't even need sunblock.

But did you know that umbrellas come in different SPF's? I found this out from Emily at the end of our beach adventure (therefore too late to do anything). Since our umbrella did not even have an SPF rating, I would assume it was on the lower end and therefore nothing-to-be-proud-of side of the SPF scale.

So if you have put together the pieces, you have probably now figured out that I have one leg that looks like it has some sort-of weird skin disease characterized by white dots on the epidermis of the body.

But at least now my uneven colored right leg matches the uneven coloring of my back from the incident last year where I tried to apply lotion sunscreen by myself. One summer at a time I will accomplish the uniform look of a sponge-painted suntanned body.

ANYWAYS, that story was not supposed to go on that long. The point of my blog tonight was what I witnessed in the water.

Emily and I went out for one last dip in the ocean before leaving. We kept seeing lots of fish riding the waves, more than normal. Then, as a wave, that reached our upper torsos, passed; I swear I saw what could only have been a shark about 2 to 3 feet long pass right by Emily's stomach!

The good news is I didn't freak out. Seriously. My eyes got big, and without a word I just pointed vigorously toward the shore and started walking that way. After we were out of the deeper water I told Emily I believed I had seen a shark. We watched the ocean for a while but never saw the shark again.

The other good news is I didn't cause mass pandemonium on the beach by yelling "Shark!" Because if I had, it would've been awful embarrassing when no one spotted the shark for themselves. After all, there is a small chance that what I saw in the water was not a shark.

I mean, I believe the side effects of having abnormal skin disorders might just be hallucinations of fish with pectoral and dorsal fins.