It's About a Fish

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws. Spielberg’s first movie. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed. What caught me off guard wasn’t the milestone—it was the sudden, vivid memory of where I was that opening day: in the theater with my dad and my brother Paul.

We’d been at Boltwood Park in Evanston—before it was renamed Crown Park—doing what we usually did. Playing fast pitch. Just two kids and a wall, one of the best games you could play with only two people. Throw. Hit. Field. Repeat. Hours could pass like that. No one telling us what to do, no real goal beyond the game itself.

But that day, our dad came looking for us.

He’d walked over to the park to find us. I don’t know why—I never thought to ask if there was a reason beyond wanting to see a movie with his sons.

“You guys want to go to a movie?”Paul asked, “Which one?”He said, “Jaws.”I asked, “What’s it about?”Dad said, “It’s about a fish.”

We didn’t need more than that. Being 10 and 12 air conditioning sounded great. We got in the car and drove out to the Golf Mill Theater in Niles. I remember how packed it was. People sitting in the aisles, lining up outside. It was playing on multiple screens and still oversold. We didn’t know anything about Spielberg. We just followed our dad into something big.

Then the lights went down.

The opening scene—Chrissie swimming alone, the water going still, then erupting—set the tone. I froze. It didn’t feel like a normal movie. Paul lasted until the boy on the raft got taken, the blood spraying up in a way like Old Faithful. That was it for him. He left, sat in the lobby for the rest of the film.

I stayed, mostly because I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t leave either.

Then that bloated head appeared underwater. It just floated out of the hole in the boat—and something in me jumped so hard I lost track of where I was. People around us were getting up and walking out. Quietly. Shaken. I remember that more than the screams.

And my dad—a minister—just sat there. Arms crossed. Smiling a little. Not mocking. Just... steady.

Afterward, walking back to the car, he said, “Sometimes when something’s scary, you laugh. It’s close to crying. Feels the same in your chest.” That was all. No deeper talk. No follow-up. But that moment, and the whole strange day around it, has stayed with me.

Now, fifty years later, I don’t really think about the shark when someone brings up Jaws. I think about being found. I think about Paul heading for the lobby. I think about sitting beside someone who wasn’t shaken. And I think about how much of life is like that—how some of the most unforgettable moments arrive quietly, out of nowhere. Just a dad, two kids, and a movie about a fish.