"Jaws" author Peter Benchley passes away at 65

"Jaws" author Peter Benchley has passed away.

Benchley's novel was the impetus for what I believe is one of the greatest movies of all time. When I was 12 years old and in grade 6, I had an old battleaxe of a teacher named Mary Reid who had a habit of putting kids, and their desks, out in the hall. My transgression was telling her to "shut up" under my breath, so out I went for two weeks. I was place just adjacent to the doorway so that I could see the lesson being taught, but I was able to sneak my paperback copy of Jaws, picked up at a local garage sale, into my desk and read it as the teacher paid attention to the 35 other kids that were in the actual classroom. I couldn't believe how much swearing there was in this book and so for fun, I underlined every "shit", "fuck" and "cunt" in red pen just for kicks. My mom found it later, and couldn't keep a straight face when she asked me why I underlined those words. I told her I was bored, sitting out in the hallway.

Great book, better flick. Easily in my top 10. Easily. Who could forget it as a City TV Great Movie with Mark Dailey's voice cutting in after a commercial: "We now return to ... Jawwwws." And when you were yuonger, how many times did you ask your Dad on a trip to the Great Lakes if there were sharks in the water? Even though the saltwater/freshwater explanation didn't make a lot of sense to me, if my Dad said there weren't sharks in there, that was good enough for me.

Ah, to be a southwestern Ontario kid in the late '80s.