“The five of us followed her to a shallow pool. A few feet away was the shark tank. It looked a lot smaller than it did from the vantage points I'd had on previous visits to the aquarium. And the sharks looked a lot bigger. In fact, they made Jaws look like a pond koi. "That's a nurse shark." Yet another aquarium employee, this time a buoyant guy,pointed out a smaller (yeah,right) one that was lurking near the edge of the tank. "They're cuddlers. They like snuggling up to each other and even us sometimes."I edged closer to Alex.He grinned and wrapped an arm around my waist. That got me into the practice pool.”

“How recently have the sharks been fed?" the guy next to me asked.Alex and I were in a small room with a dry-erase board, a perky blonde aquarium emplyee, and three guys from Rutgers who'd won their fraternity Christmas prize. True to Alex's promise, no one had seen me in my miniscule jungle print. Another perky girl had handed me a wet suit and pointed me into a changing room. So as I listened to the basics of shark tank etiquette, I was fully encased in blue neoprene from ankle to jaw. The frat boys kept sneaking looks at me when they thought I-and Alex-wasn't looking. It made me feel just a little bit better. Alex's promise that I didn't have to get into the water if I really didn't want to helped, too. It had gotten me out of the car and into the aquarium."You can do it," he'd coaxed."Yes," I'd answered, thinking of the skateboarder a little and "fake it til you make it" more. "I can do it.""Yesterday." Perky Girl answered the feeding question. "Believe me. They're not hungry."I wanted to know exactly how she knew that.Did she ask the sharks?"Okay," she chirped. "Let's get snorkeling.”

“If I had a choice between walking along a sidewalk with no rails and a thousand foot drop, or jumping in a tank full of blood and sharks, I’d choose the sharks.”

“Being nearly naked around Barrons felt a lot like going to a shark convention lightly basted in blood.”

“pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (...) the beginning”

“There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.”