Website design By BotEap.comI bought my nephew one of those “Air Sharks” for his birthday. You know, the ones that show BeJoingus scaring off the dog on TV. I bought it on sale at half price. I thought, “Hey, he likes sharks, I like sharks, at half the price, let’s say, this could be a lot of fun!”

Website design By BotEap.comYes, I said it, fun.

Website design By BotEap.comThe box says these things inflate up to five feet long. Heh… I almost forgot – inflate. Like in helium. Do you know how difficult it is to find helium to inflate your own balloon? Your own five foot long balloon? After spending half a day driving around various stores, I found someone who would inflate this thing for about double what I had already paid. Now I had a five-foot silver behemoth that I needed to put in the backseat of my car, while it was desperately trying to escape my clutches (there really are no good places to attach finless shark balloons). I’m sure the guy whose rent I just paid for with my helium purchase had a lot to do instead of helping me out, like a really challenging game of Sudoku, or something.

Website design By BotEap.comSo now I have a five foot shark shaped balloon in the back of my car and a box full of parts. Yes, that’s right: not only did I need to find enough helium to inflate this monster, but now I needed to assemble it by adding all the fins and parts that actually made it fly… or swim… or whatever. .

Website design By BotEap.comNow here I was, a man in dire need of an aeronautical engineering degree trying to figure out how this all works. I mean, they didn’t even include the instructions! (Two hours later, when I’m halfway there, my wife says, “Hey, I’ve got the instructions here, why don’t you use these?”)

Website design By BotEap.comThe first order of business was to attach the fins, three in all, using transparent tape in a really weird way. (As an aside, you might be wondering why sharks have three fins. Well, it’s well known that most things in nature come in threes: you’ve got your triceratops, your poison ivy leaves, uhh… (you have your three-legged dog, and finally, the typical number of strokes to get a golf ball out of a sand trap.) After spending the twenty minutes required to separate it from its backing, the tape immediately proceeded to stick to itself. itself, instead of the butt and shark, which I’m now straddling to keep it from shooting up to the ceiling. After three tries (hey, there’s that magic three, again), I clear and after about forty-five minutes I locate one of our two dozen rolls of duct tape that we’ve hidden around the house. Clever! The fins eventually caught on with the shark, never mind that they were placed at some very strange angles never really seen in the wild. They were united attached.

Website design By BotEap.comSo what the heck are all these other leftover pieces? Well… time to swallow my pride (or I still have a tuna sandwich between my teeth) and ask my wife for directions.

Website design By BotEap.comOk, I get it: something for propulsion. First something to make the tail move back and forth… I guess because a shark’s tail moves… you know… back and forth… for propulsion. Ah… the mist is lifting now!

Website design By BotEap.comNext, there’s this contraption that moves back and forth (nautical terms, for land sailors) that needs to be glued to the underside of the shark with the special tape. So soon I’m wondering where the #@&$ is! I put that stupid duct tape on, anyway.

Website design By BotEap.comFinally, with everything securely taped, I take the fully built shark into the room with the high ceiling, release it, and watch as it shoots rapidly upwards. I use the remote control device to move the tail and make the contraption go back and forth. The shark sticks to the ceiling harder than any of those fins I hit against it.

Website design By BotEap.comSo I look up those addresses (what are they called… oh yeah) and look at the last item. Oh, before I released the shark I was supposed to put some marbles or putty or broken teeth or something in the designated ballast compartment. Ballast! I run naked down our street yelling “Eureka!” The neighbors didn’t appreciate it…heck, they probably haven’t even heard of Archimedes.

Website design By BotEap.comSo, after posting bail, with two stacked chairs and a couple of brooms taped together (I taped the roll of duct tape to my torso, so I wouldn’t lose the duct tape again), I was able to slowly maneuver the shark down until that I was able to grab it. And the good news is that they say that the lump in my head is actually not a bad sign, less chance of bleeding in the brain.

Website design By BotEap.comAfter adding just the right amount of marbles and a broken tooth, the beast is airborne in our house, just like in the commercial, though the dog looks at it and yawns. By the way, a word of warning: keep your Air Shark away from spinning ceiling fans, as they tend to suck them in like a supermassive black hole.

Website design By BotEap.comSo, after about half an hour of the kids watching us adults showing them how it should be done, one of the men (I think it was Lenny, after his eighth beer) suggests we take him outside for double the fun. It sounded good to me, since the winds were calm (he still had his head on me, I was only on my sixth beer).

Website design By BotEap.comOne of the women (who hadn’t even had a beer) said something about the range of the remote, trying very hard to sound technical, probably because of her electrical engineering degree. I said, “Sure, go back to baking cookies. We men have it under control.”

Website design By BotEap.comI think somewhere over Delaware right now, an airline pilot is reporting a flying shark at twenty-three thousand feet.