There was a pod of sharks swimming right below me! AND they were jumping up and down into the water and circling my descent! The boat petered and puttered. I continued to descend into the group of sharks. I peed my bikini on the way down … understanding these were my final moments. The next few seconds were petrifying. I descended into the pool of sharks — and not the fun, drinking at the bar kind, but the tear the skin from your live, screaming body kind in the ocean. I distinctly remember trying to get ready to be eaten alive.

Well, it turned out that these were not the “eating-the-porn-girl-in-a-skimpy-bikini” kind of sharks at all. In fact, the sharks were not interested in me as dinner. They were just playing and frolicking in the water, ever curious as to who I was, what I was doing there … and probably why I was dripping pee on their heads.

And then about that time I realized that not only was I not in danger, but my sharks were actually dolphins. … And, of course, everyone on the boat was laughing hysterically. The whole thing had been a joke … on me. There was never a problem with the boat. They were faking it. The crew thought it would be funny to scare the piss out of me … and they did. (Of course, if they had known me better they would have known not to consider this such a great accomplishment.)

I’ve gone parasailing several times since, but never quite had the experience that I did while celebrating my twenty-first birthday.

If you want to know a truth about me, I’d much rather grow old saying to myself, “I probably shouldn’t have done that” rather than saying, “I wish I had … ”

[Ginger used photos from the actual trip to illustrate this story, although we must admit that her friend apparently missed shooting the “peeing from a parasail” bit. We also seem to be lacking evidence of any dangerous species, except perhaps of the Land Shark variety. Finally, while we do admit that from a technical standpoint, the photos look like poor scans of photos taken 30+ years ago, we enjoyed them anyway and thought that you might as well. We remain particularly interested in the story of “Paul” from that time. So far we do not know him at all, but back in 1983 he thought it worth the effort to carve his name into a tree with Ginger’s. … She seems to have always had that effect on people. — Ed.]