#and it turns out Del Toro also had similar thoughts with creatures around his house as a kid so hey

[dellinah]

Oh my god this post unblocked a childhood memory that was long forgotten

But ok so when I was a kid, some TV channel decided to have a shark week (haha) where they showed a movie about sharks every day for a week late at night. And I happened to catch 3 or 4 of those movies after dinner

Well the first ones were fine. They were the regular "People are in boats/people are near the sea" movies where it was PLAUSIBLE for them to be attacked by a shark, yknow? (I think one of them was the original Jaws movie even). Overall they had some crazy concepts like a shark wanting revenge or genetically altered sharks but still, it wasn't anything TOO out there in terms of reality vs fiction

But me being a tiny kid with no concept of time and space, I suddenly became paranoid that a shark would suddenly attack us. It didn't matter that we were at home, kilometers away from the closest sea, in my mind it was completely possible that we'd still be attacked by a shark, somehow. And I was so scared I didn't sleep right for a few days

After I told my dad why I was so scared, his argument to calm me down was "well, we are far away from the sea. No shark can get you here, you are safe". And that convinced me bc my fear simply vanished after that

Fast forward to the last day of shark week. I was completely fine with sharks now, bc hey, they can't get me, so Im excited for the movie

Only the last movie they decided to show was one of those over the top, silly shark movies where the creators don't give a shit. Think Sharknado levels of insanity. I wish I could remember which one it was specifically but all i know is that it was a movie about sharks that could attack on land maybe? Or traveled through sewers to reach the city? Smth like that. All I know is that the people in the movie were not safe at home anymore, bc the sharks could get them on land now

And yeah, nowadays I'd look at that and think ha, it's cgi with the budget of a peanut, a ridiculous story, and terrible acting, where it's so bad it's almost kind of good

But for a little kid who was scared shitless of sharks and whose only comfort came from the fact that sharks were confined to sea and could not attack me at home? That just felt like the big fuck you ever. Like no, youre not safe at home, and there will be a shark crawling through the toilet next time I go there to eat me alive. Totally plausible

And suddenly my dad's argument no longer made me feel safe, and I was as scared as before, if not more, bc now I was convinced they could get me anywhere I was and there was no scape

So I became very paranoid, scared shitless, ans didn't sleep for like a week bc of a bootleg jaws-rip off that probably took them like a week to make. Memories

I was going to say "Now this is just getting silly", but I think we already passed that point a long time ago.