When I was a kid my parents enrolled me in swimming classes, a decision I’ve always been grateful to them for considering we live on an island and the only way off to get to the rest of Canada is to cross a rather significant stretch of ice cold Pacific Ocean. I can always spot the ones who can’t swim when I travel by ferry, they tend to stay to the middle of the craft and count the life rafts as if had suddenly found themselves on the Titanic and surrounded by icebergs.

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But I digress. I liked swimming as a kid, so much so that my parents took the added step of getting me in with a local swim club and exposing me to the joys of competitive swimming. Early mornings, the scent of chlorine, and the bellowing commands of a swim coach my father referred to as the “oatmeal savage”. It was thirty years ago, but I can still picture an older woman, nearly as wide as she was tall, directing us to swim faster as she paced alongside the pool.

I was no Michael Phelps, but I managed to swim well enough to keep myself off my coach’s shit list most of the time. I never won a meet though, I often ended up “placing well”, which is code for “you didn’t suck as much as most of the others, have a ribbon.”

I don’t remember how old I was, but one day my father had a brilliant idea to help me swim faster. Jaws had come out a few years before, and as luck would have it, it was on TV. We watched it together, and as my young mind took in the images of massive sharks with teeth the size of my head chasing swimmers around the ocean, my beloved father spoke these words. “Imagine that in the water behind you next time you are swimming”. Time didn’t stop, there was no ominous silence, no dramatic music swelled to mark this turning point in my life, but it was there all the same. My life had changed.

The next day I did what my father had suggested, and imagined that as I crossed into the deep end of the pool a massive shape of shadow and teeth rose up from the bottom and chased me the rest of the way. My times got markedly better, and soon that visual was part of every practice and every swim meet. In my mind, there WAS a shark in the pool with me, and if I slowed down I was a goner. A funny thing about visualizing though, is that if you do it long enough, it becomes part of you. It took me years to be able to swim without hearing the ominous music of Jaws’ theme song in my head. When I went to Australia? I barely set foot in the ocean. But in time, the image faded, the theme song died away, and I was finally able to swim in peace.

These days I have returned to the pool as part of my new fitness routine. Three days a week I do laps, bringing back memories of a childhood spent soaked in chlorine and with the Oatmeal Savage’s directions ringing in my ears. Last weekend I went in early on a Sunday, and to my delight had the pool to myself. No screaming kids, elderly men flailing wildly as they try to recapture their youthful vigour and only succeed in drowning those of us nearby. I was three laps in before it happened, and suddenly I could hear “Duh Duh, duh duh” echoing through my mind. “No way.” I told myself. “Don’t be stupid, this is a four foot deep pool in the middle of a hotel. There is no damn shark in here.” Still, I found myself speeding up again, and it was only with an act of pure will I did not turn around to make sure there was nothing behind me. As I reached the end of my lap and turned to go back, I had a moment of raw panic as my brain tried to convince myself that when I completed my tumble turn I would launch myself into the toothy maw of my nightmares. I stopped, stood and stared down at the empty pool, my heart hammering in my throat. “You’re an idiot” I told myself and dove back in, only to hear that music once more.

Fortunately for me, at that moment another swimmer appeared poolside, and as quickly as it came, the shark that wasn’t there, was finally gone. Apparently my personal demons can only manifest when I am alone, a fact for which I am extremely grateful. The next time I swim alone, I’m bringing along an imaginary rifle and a sheriff named Brody, to make sure I make it out alive.