See this? It’s the contraption my husband is desperate to buy. Here it shows a guy in a pond or a lake, my husband wants to take it out into the ocean. Now, he’ll try to sugarcoat it by saying “harbor” but what makes a harbor a “harbor”? The frickin’ OCEAN.

So, what does my husband do? He starts researching shark attacks off the coast of California. He starts teasing his wife about watching “Jaws” too many times. I looked at him and said, “It’s not even a bigger boat you need… it’s a BOAT period!”

He tells me there has only been one confirmed death off the coast of Morro Bay and “a few unexplained disappearances.” Perusing fishing forums he confirmed that there are two great white sharks that sort of “own” the waters from Morro Bay to Oceania… BUT!! (and this part is supposed to make me feel better) They don’t go in the harbor and of course, he isn’t going to go out of the harbor.

No, no, no… by all means take your stinky bait and attract fish around your pudgy ass, bobbing around completely exposed in a float tube with your stark white legs, complete with FLIPPERS (oh, that doesn’t look even remotely fish or seal like, does it?) dangling freely in the water because that might not entice the sharks into the harbor at all. I’m sure they wouldn’t feel like they were being teased or anything! I’m sure between the bait and the fish you might catch and the fact they can smell a drop of blood in like 20 bazillion gallons of water they’d NEVER consider entering the harbor to come after your not exactly speedy ass in your fancy, floating, shark buffet.

Then he started talking about going to Ventura instead. Ventura has never had a “confirmed” shark attack. I saw JAWS! I know how that works – they didn’t want to CONFIRM a shark attack for the first half of the damn movie! Duh!!!

He sends me statistics like these:

* Odds (lifetime) of dying in a shark attack: about 1 in 1.8 million (for years in which there was a shark attack death).
* Odds of dying in a car crash: 1 in 228.
* In a plane (or other powered aircraft) crash: 1 in 6,137.
* From a fall: 1 in 229.
* In a lightning strike: 1 in 56,439.
* In an earthquake: 1 in 120,161.
* In a flood: 1 in 413,887.
* By being shot to death by someone else: 1 in 315.
* From an accidental fireworks discharge: 1 in 744,997.

Clearly, he thinks I’m an idiot. I explained to him that I’m fairly certain they calculated those statistics on shark deaths without taking into consideration old guys paddling around through the ocean with their legs dangling about looking like some sort of injured seal IN A FISHING FLOAT TUBE.

I’d say that probably changes the numbers quite a bit. Wouldn’t you?

Look, I’m not completely unwilling to work with him, the float tube was fine for lake fishing if he just had to have one. Ocean fishing in a canoe or actual BOAT is fine… but he isn’t going out into ocean water looking like an over-sized bobber.

Oh, and check out that last statistic?

“From an accidental fireworks discharge: 1 in 744,997.”

He just screwed himself out of 4th of July, too.