There’s a scene in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – the movie about a misunderstood great white shark who just wants someone to love him – where two hired hands, Quint and Hooper, out at night on a boat, begin drinking and comparing their wounds. Hooper shows Quint where he was bit by a moray eel, and Quint in turn shows where he was injured by a thresher shark’s tail. Hooper shows Quint where a bull shark scraped his leg, and then Quint tells the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
It’s an unnerving, harrowing moment, where you feel the fragility of mortality, a sense of impending doom, and the connection between two people with a shared experience that cannot truly be understood by the masses.
It’s also a lot like when my friend Tracy and I recently had lunch at Kluck’s Krispy Chicken.
We both turned 50 this year. The terror is real.
“You wear glasses?” I asked, inhaling my fries and trying to decide if I’d be in any shape for dinner after eating this much grease for lunch.
“Yes. In the mornings, when I’m reading. You?”
“Not yet. I mean, I need them for reading, for sure. I’m just holding out … for some reason. But it’s coming. Like, I probably won’t make it through next week without them.”
“Look at the font on my phone.”
“What is that at, 48?”
“72.”
“Cripes. How about your hearing?”
“Awh, that’s been going downhill for ten years already.”
“Same. I remember my dad’s hearing going. He would kind of cock his head to the side, leaning his ear in. And then if he didn’t understand me, he’d just nod his head like I’d asked him a question. A question that he apparently felt deserved an affirmative response.”
“Do you do that?”
“Not yet. I like to put it back on the other guy. ‘You need to stop mumbling’ is my go-to. But also, like, my dad was in Vietnam. His hearing was damaged by combat. Mine is from going to rock concerts without ear protection. Mine is because I’m an idiot.”
“Oh yeah, you do love concerts.”
“I did. Well, I do. I just want good seats, or it isn’t worth it anymore. I’m not paying money to sit in the back of a stadium and look at a screen from a mile away. I can just sit on my couch at home and watch a screen.” [Even as I say it, I realize it’s the oldest I’ve ever sounded. I’ve crossed some kind of line.]
“What about your memory?” asked Tracy.
“Stop mumbling,” I tell Tracy.
“YOUR. MEMORY.”
“Oh, sure,” I say, nodding my head.
“I have the hardest time recalling the names of actors. Actors I LIKE.” Tracy makes a frustrated face.
“Mine is just words in general,” I tell him. I’m trying to make a point – or worse, say something clever – and I can feel my mind searching for the perfect word…like it’s playing a matching-pairs game, and I keep turning over a card going, ‘Is this the word I was looking for?’ and it’s not. It’s never the word.”
We eat in silence for a moment.
“At least you’re in great shape,” I say.
“I’m scheduling a hernia operation.”
“WHAT?! But you do CrossFit!”
“That’s where I got the hernia.”
“Stop mumbling.”
