A Still Shark Is Still a Shark

(20 weeks)

SUNDAY.

In my parents’ living room, my father reads a book on the couch beside me while my mother exercises in the other room.We are having a visit.

“Two hundred twenty-five,” my mother calls from her bedroom. She’s been giving my father and me an update on the calories she’s burned riding her exercise bike.

“She’s cycling herself into non-existence,” my father says, getting up from the couch to use the washroom. He’s gone for twenty calories, and when he returns, he is distraught.

“Instead of sitting down on the toilet seat,” he says, “I sat on the closed lid. Did you close the toilet?”

I confess that I did, and my father is outraged.

“This has never been a closed-toilet-lid family,” he says.

“I really feel part of a rich tradition,” I say.

I explain that closing the toilet lid is something I started doing after reading an article in a science journal about the molecules of toilet water that escape with each flush.

“Your toothbrush might as well be a toilet brush,” I say.

“Two hundred forty-five,” my mother says.

“This place is a nuthouse.” My father picks his book back up, and we continue our visit in an easy silence that will be broken only by the next chime of calories.

MONDAY.

Five hundred. According to the McDonald’s website, there are five hundred calories in a McRib, half of which are from fat.

I’m studying up on my prey in anticipation of dining out with Josh. Though I have never eaten one, the McRib is a sandwich that’s fascinated me for years. For one thing, if it’s popular, why not keep it on the regular menu? And if it isn’t, why keep bringing it back every few years? Either people want it or they don’t.

On the drive to McDonald’s, Josh explains his theory.

“The McRib is fleeting, and its ephemerality stirs anxiety in the hearts of men. Any day one might walk into McDonald’s and the McRib will no longer be there. One must seize it before it is driven back into oblivion. It’s like the green Shamrock Shake, but without the stabilizing tie-in of a St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Maybe the McRib could be tied in to national heart disease awareness week.”

Josh thinks that might be the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.We argue the point passionately.

Another point of fascination is that the McRib is composed of meat that’s been shaped into the form of rib bones. In terms of its immanence and use of self-guise as disguise, the McRib is probably the most postmodern item on the McDonald’s menu.

At the restaurant, the cashier tells us that they stopped serving the McRib a day earlier.

We are both a little crushed.

On our way to Chinatown for dumplings, we cheer our spirits by rolling down the windows and arguing over the difference between dumplings and kreplach. We do so intensely enough to make passersby stop and stare.

THURSDAY.

While watching a documentary about sharks, I become saddened that sharks don’t seem to be scaring me the way they used to.When I was a kid, about eighty percent of my time was spent worrying about being eaten by sharks.This was during the seventies, and with all the movies—Shark!, Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws 3 in 3D—everyone was. Going to the beach was an act of daredevilhood. I remember dropping a hard-boiled egg into the surf to see if a shark would come and get it—to see if it was safe to swim—and my dad yelling to never mind the shark, he was going to murder me for wasting eggs.

But nowadays, or at least on some days, being eaten by a shark doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, it would be bad, but after the first couple bites, I suspect no worse than missing out on McRib season or listening to someone talk about their RRSP contribution.

I’ve financial matters on my mind this evening because I’ve promised myself, despite its being a major anxiety, to get a head start on my taxes. But instead, I continue to watch the documentary on sharks, nostalgic for old fears and still unwilling to confront new ones.