I had two days until I left to visit my daughter’s college in Florida. 

It was time to prepare. 

As in, time to watch Alligator and Society of the Snow. 

I don’t know why I do these things. 

Alligator, I think, is self-explanatory. An oversized alligator terrorizes a Missouri town. Released in 1980, it stars approximately two percent of the Breaking Bad cast. 

Although I hadn’t seen it in years, I have long loved Alligator. A giant creature movie? C’mon.  

The horror podcast I listen to is covering Alligator in its upcoming season. 

I had to do my homework, guys. I had to. I couldn’t let my trip to Florida interfere.  

Unless you want me to be unprepared for my podcast. Do you want me to be unprepared? You know, I’d never want you to be unprepared for your horror podcast. 

Sheesh. 

As I watched the 30-foot alligator break through the sidewalk and eat people — you’d think sidewalk engineers would make those things alligator-proof — I thought back on a trip to North Carolina’s Fort Fisher aquarium.  

My brother knows a staffer there. He arranged for us to meet.  

We connected at the tank holding Luna, an albino alligator. 

Luna and I have met before.  

She used to live at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans.  

Weird that I went to a reptile house in New Orleans. But I’ll be honest. I was a childless newlywed in a city where open containers are practically de rigueur. 

The staffer I met at the North Carolina aquarium said the state’s wild alligators occasionally go for dips in the ocean. 

“Um, what?” I asked. 

“Oh yeah,” she said. “You’ll see them out there, swimming along the surface.” 

I have vacationed in North Carolina’s Outer Banks my whole life. Before it was trendy. Back when I’d have to explain to people the what and where of the Outer Banks. 

So don’t come at me with your OBX sticker.  

I never knew North Carolina was home to alligators. But one pandemic night, I was on a Zoom with my husband’s outdoor association. One of the attendants, a North Carolina transplant, let it slip. 

Half a dozen people on the Zoom shook their heads, trying to drown him out with a loud “Stop!” or “No!” They knew of my general herpetophobia and Outer Banks-philia because, well, I talk a lot. 

But the damage was done.  

That my daughter is attending college in Florida — a state tied only with Louisiana for the size of its alligator population — is unnerving. 

Especially now that I know they can grow to thirty feet if they migrate to a sewer where an unscrupulous scientist is dumping synthetic hormones.  

Not cool, dude. Not cool at all. 

Now, I watched Society of the Snow because it’s an Academy Award-nominated film. 

And it’s about a plane crash. 

That actually happened. 

It’s a retelling of the 1993 Ethan Hawke film Alive, about the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes Mountains. 

This new film is based on a book that, yes. I ordered on Friday. It was at the top of the list of things I had to do before my trip. 

The film is fantastic. But it was as the plane broke apart that I said to myself, “Huh. I really shouldn’t be watching this forty-eight hours before I board an Airbus.” 

But I did. I watched it.  

I mean, I too was flying over mountains. You never know what skills you might glean from plane crash survival movies. 

We arrived at our Florida hotel around dinner time. My daughter, the beach-loving future Floridian that she is, wanted to swim in the Gulf of Mexico. 

I observed the surf, lapping feet away from our hotel’s back door. 

My daughter invited me to join her. 

“No thanks,” I said. “Alligators. And sharks. Sharks are most active around this time. It’s when they feed.” 

You may be surprised to know a teenager planning to major in marine science is not the most warm and fuzzy place to go with your irrational ocean-based fears. 

“If alligators sometimes swim in the ocean, that means they come on the beach, too,” she pointed out. “You’re no safer there.” 

I told her I liked my odds against an alligator on the beach better than I did in the water. 

But I promised her I’d swim with her tomorrow. 

Last night, one of the college staff told us the sharks in the Gulf are small. 

Small.  

Buddy, I’ve seen Jaws 3D hundreds of times. It is only one of my favorite movies. And let me tell you something. 

That shark wasn’t small. 

And do you know where it lived?  

Yeah. Florida. 

I better go watch Jaws 3D again. 

Just in case.