Shark Bites

Well, the other night my husband prepared shark. This was a 7 foot blue shark they accidentally caught while salmon fishing. My 2nd cousin (AKA: "niece") got a recipe from her dad and it was fabulous!! Cooked in a bit of lime juice with ginger and garlic among other things, it was grilled to perfection. We also had a bit of french bread with it and I don't even remember what all else.

I was surprised by the shark's tenderness. Then floods of memories came back to me. A Hell's Angel loaning me enough money to cover what I was short on a cafe tab while on a high school band trip. All tattooed and admittedly slightly scary looking, he was kind and had a gentle heart. The other Hell's Angel who my cousin "accidentally dated" thinking he was a door to door vacuum salesman until she discovered he had a murder wrap. I scared him off from her doorstep and may have put the fear of God into him if it weren't for the fact that several years later he committed an armed robbery resulting in another murder, but I had scared him. At the time I was maybe all of one hundred pounds and 5 foot 4. He even called me "ma mm" "Yes, ma mm, I don't want no trouble ma mm, I'm sorry ma mm." The tough looking biker, whose name I forget, that you had to get past to get in the back door of a sleazy bar that had a great band playing (I was underage at the time). He looked scary but was cool and friendly. My friend in community college who looked like a member of ZZ Top & wore leathers all the time. He was rebuilding his motorcycle in his upstairs dorm room with the hopes of riding out the front door the last day of school - he missed the dead line. He ended up cutting his hair and being recruited to work for NASA! Nature is like that, when we have a weakness or a perceived one, we try harder to mask it with a fierce persona or exterior. Fish which have markings to look like they are bigger and tougher than they really are. Leading us back to our shark. A fierce water creature, yet, so tender and moist when we are the ones biting it and not the other way around.

I've just been interrupted by my 7 yr old holding a Pringles can asking if they can bring their pets in. "Pets?" I quandaried. I was told they had captured ants. I thanked him thoroughly for asking first and explained that ants need much more than a Pringles can to survive and maybe someday we could get an ant farm but not right now. I'm just thankful he asked.

I can't help but wonder further about shark bites. They unintentionally bite the wrong things foraging for food sometimes. What or who have I unintentionally bitten while foraging for God only knows what. Sometimes we all go into protection mode, the good old fight or flight response. I have fibromyalgia along with a laundry list of other ailments. I'm told that fibro sufferers have their fight or flight response permanently turned on, depleting levels of serotonin (yea I have a medical reason for my dark chocolate cravings! YES! SCORE!) blah, blah, blah. Anyway, besides the physical problems this produces, it makes me forgetful (see previous post regarding cantaloupe gut brains) I wonder if it causes me to behave differently in my interactions with others. To anyone I've accidentally "bitten" my apologies. Having recently been bitten myself, I found it to be divine intervention that I was lead to the Christian book and gift store and found little verses on forgiveness and kindness everywhere I turned. I've forgiven without being asked in the verbal sense and I feel all the better for it.

Dear Readers my wishes for you today are: be blessed by whomever or whatever your higher power be. Enjoy delicious bites of whatever suits your appetite, be careful not to bite others and forgiving when they inadvertently bite you.