Left Sharks of the World: Unite and Take Over

By Jillian Owens

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Left vs. Right…why does it always seem to come down to this?  Whether it’s politics, scissors, or that one lefty desk in your college classroom you try to avoid, we all seem to have a definite preference for one or the other..

This is perhaps most brilliantly demonstrated in the recent halftime performance featuring a Ms. Katy Perry and her two shark pals.

Missy Elliot and Lenny Kravitz may have been present as well.

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You see a shark on the left of Ms. Perry, and well at to her right.  During their big number, you can see one shark is off-rhythm and one clearly has his stuff together.  It actually looks like one of the sharks completely forgets his routine and just starts doing a bizarre freestyle shark/robot (Sharkbot?!?) awkward dance at the end..

Go ahead.  Watch it again.

[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/7y8vRvXDj8M”]

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Everyone keeps making fun of Left Shark for his performance.  But while Left Shark failed at choreography, he totally won his way into the hearts of the other “Left Sharks” out there..

I am a Left Shark.  One of my earliest “Left Shark” moments I can remember was from when I was a little kid.  My older sister’s class had made it to the state level of the 4-H talent competition with (if memory serves) a pretty impressive performance of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from the musical Annie.  But on the big day, one of the girls took ill and couldn’t perform.  They needed a replacement…and fast.  As I was the only similarly-aged female around, they grabbed me and tried their best to teach me Back Row Orphan #6’s choreography in the hour they had before the competition..

I tried.  I really really tried.  But I couldn’t memorize any of the steps, and my attempts to fake my way through the routine were pretty obvious.  They ended up cutting Back Row Orphan #6/Me from the routine altogether.  There is no place for Left Sharks in the cutthroat world of Elementary School farming club talent shows, my friend..

I still can’t dance.  Oh sure…I’ll pretend I’m just fake bad-dancing, but it’s really just me genuinely trying.  And just as with that Left Shark, everyone can tell..

But why is this a bad thing?  Why do the Right Sharks automatically get to be…well…right…leaving their Lefty compatriots to shame and ridicule?  What if I don’t want to follow your rules?  What if I can’t?  What if The Man tells me to do some dumb version of the Macarena, I instead opt to invent The Sharkbot?  Does that really make me wrong?.

And it’s not just about dancing either.  While I’m definitely left-sharked, I’m also entirely right-brained.   I’m more creative than analytical.  I don’t like to sit still.  I have about a million ideas and like to flit between them at will and work in my own way.  In the past this made me feel like a bit of an oddball and an outsider to folks who could actually handle thinking in a linear path and can do basic things like…math (ew.)

Are you a Left Shark?  Do you try to hide your left-sharkedness from the world for fear they won’t understand that you do The Sharkbot™ to the beat of your own underwater drummer?.

Can we all agree to stop and just let our freak fins fly?

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Jillian Owens is a writer, designer, and eco-fashion revolutionary. A Columbia SC transplant, she graduated from the University of South Carolina with a BFA in Theatre and English. When she’s not gallivanting about, she’s busy refashioning ugly thrift store duds into fashionable frocks at ReFashionista.net or helping the underserved through her work in Community Impact at United Way of the Midlands. She also reviews local theater productions for Jasper Magazine and Onstage Columbia, and is an occasional contributor for The Free Times. Any comments, questions, or crude remarks can be directed to [email protected].

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