I’m afraid of the ocean.  I love to swim; in fact, I was a pool lifeguard for years and still swim laps three times a week, but the ocean freaks me out.  I tell people it’s because it’s dirty, crowded, and polluted, but if I’m being honest, there’s one other reason why I resist going into open water. Jaws. It’s one of my all-time favorite movies, but it pretty much ruined the ocean for me forever.  And I’m not the only one – after the film’s premiere in 1975, there was a noticeable drop in tourism in many beachfront communities.  It turns out that people would prefer not getting eaten by a giant killer shark on a vacation with the kids. According to Wikipedia, guess how many fatal shark attacks there have been in the last six years in the United States?  Three.  That’s half a person eaten per year (pun definitely intended).  Compare that to the roughly 300,000 deaths in fatal car accidents during that same period!  And yet I climb into my car every day without a second thought, but the ocean gives me a case of the screaming willies. There’s a psychological phenomenon behind this and if you bear with me, ...