This happened when I was around nine, but it’s still traumatizing to think about. Whenever my parents mention it, but I always feel like I want to cry. As I said, I was around nine when this happened, so I was pretty young. I experienced this during summer of 2017, when me and my family went to the Maldives.  
     First off, the trip just started off horribly. We had to take three flights and a boat to get there. It was so tiring and boring that I wish we had just not left and stayed home. But since that wasn’t really possible, I stayed and tried to convince myself that it was fine. Since the flight was apparently infiltrated by babies, I had to sit there and listen to them cry and whine about whatever. The whole flight I kept asking my mom, who was seated right next to me, when we would be there.  
“Mom, I seriously cannot be here any longer.” 
“Just 2 more hours, you’ll be fine.” 
*After 10 minutes* 
“Are we there yet? I feel like I want to jump off and I am not afraid of doing it.” 
     The first two flights both went like this, and then it was time for the third one. The third flight was to take us from the land to wherever the boat was. Take note that this land was somewhere small close to the Maldives, so the airplane wasn’t really the best and it looked like the parts of it could literally fall off any minute. Despite that, I still got on it. The entire flight was just me wondering if I was going to die. It seriously looked like it was going to fall apart into small pieces, and it kept shaking. Then, finally, after half an hour, and so suddenly, the plane landed, and we arrived at the boat. The boat travel was only supposed to be about 10 minutes, and it was only because you couldn’t really land a plane in the Maldives, and wherever our hotel was.  
Bear in mind that I had never seen the hotel before. Not pictures, not videos, not a preview, nothing. But when we finally arrived, I thanked myself for staying the entire time and not giving up because of the annoying flights. The entire island was just one big hotel. As soon as I got off the boat, I saw all the staff gathered around welcoming us. At that moment, I felt like I was in a movie. Everyone was so welcoming and sweet, and they even gave us coconut drinks. It felt like I was dreaming until my brother spoke to me. 
“This coconut drink actually tastes disgusting, but it was a really nice gesture so I’ll keep drinking it.” 
“It feels like I’m drinking puke. I’ll probably throw mine out once we’re in the room.” 
     As we kept walking and walking on our way to our rooms there were still staff all around us welcoming us. Soon enough, we got to our rooms. Everything was going perfect. We had plans set out for every single one of the days that we would be staying there, so there would be no boring days. It seemed like nothing could really go wrong. 
     The few first days went really good. We did a lot of activities that the hotel offered. We went scuba diving and we swam with turtles. We swam around with tiny little boats that we could just use ourselves. We also got on a bigger boat with a bunch of other people in the middle of the sea and caught different fish that were swimming below us. It was all going well until we were having lunch one day and one of the staff members mentioned that the day after a bunch of people staying at the hotel and the staff would go with a boat to a different area of the island and feed the big sharks that swam around there. I saw nothing wrong with that since sharks seemed actually really cool to me. My dad and brother weren’t really convinced though. 
 “I’m not sure that that’ll really be a fun experience for the children. What if something happens? You don’t know if those sharks bite or not.” 
“Well, if those sharks bite then why would the staff even provide this activity. “ 
     After second thought they both finally agreed. Tomorrow rolls around and I wake up as excited as ever. I’d never really experienced anything like this, or close to it before so I was so happy that I got to do it. We were supposed to have breakfast and as soon as we were done we’d have to leave with the rest of the people and the staff. During breakfast my brother and my dad still didn’t seem convinced. They turned to me.  
“Prunela. Are you sure that you actually want to do this.” 
“Obviously. It'll be so fun.” 
“Okay... but, you know those sharks could bite, right? 
“I am fully aware.” 
“Oh. Okay.” 
     I could tell that the only reason why they were trying to scare me into not going was because they were scared. I didn’t let it get to me though. We finally finished breakfast and started heading towards the boat. The boat was already pretty full with people. We found a seat there and the boat slowly started going. I could see my brother shaking the entire time.  
“Hey, are you okay?” 
“Yeah.. Um. I’m just... cold. Yup.” 
“Coward. The sharks don’t bite.” 
“We don’t know for sure!!!” 
“Yes we-” 
     As soon as I was about to respond to him my mom nudged my arm to signal that the boat had stopped so we would probably be getting off soon. Getting off the boat I could feel my breathing and heart rate increase a little. It’s like I already got a feeling that something bad would happen.  
     The ground was a little above water and there was a fence separating the ground area from the water, except for one small part of the ground which didn’t have a fence around it, which I assumed was like that because the sharks needed to get a little closer to whoever was feeding them, which was scary to me, but it made sense. Soon enough, all the people were behind the fences whilst a guy, that was obviously trained to feed these sharks, stood in the small area where there was no fence and started bringing the food out. As soon as he started bringing the food out, I could see the water becoming wavier which I assumed were the sharks and whatever other fish there was that needed to be fed. My brother kept nudging me.  
“This is actually so scary. What if one of them just jumps out? It could happen at any time and we wouldn’t be quick enough to react.” 
“I’m pretty sure sharks can’t jump.” 
     He was about to respond when I shushed him because I could see the triangle that sharks have on their spine above the water. Soon enough, all the sharks came above water and they were all swimming slowly towards the guy with the food. They were actually so beautiful and definitely less scary than what I thought they would look like. As me and my family got closer to the fence, the guy told us that we could touch the sharks' backs. “That seems very dangerous. What if something happens?” my dad said to my mom. “Come on. If he’s telling us that we can touch them then it’s definitely not dangerous, right?” she responded. They went back and forth a little discussing this, but when they saw other people touching the sharks and nothing bad happening, my mom decided to stop and bend down to also touch them.  
     The fences were metal and had holes in them, big enough for you to fit both your arms in and look through them. I saw my mom petting the sharks so I bottled up whatever fear I had at that moment, and I slowly slid my hand through the metal fences and towards one of the sharks that was closest to me. I petted it and I petted it and after a little I realized that nothing bad was happening, so I didn’t need to be scared anymore and that I could just enjoy this moment. Or so I thought.  
     As I was petting one of the sharks mindlessly, I let my hand glide through its back. The water was as cold as ice. The shark I was petting was slowly swimming away, and eventually, as my hand glided on its back and then on its tail, another shark came immediately behind the one I was petting. As I said before, I was petting the first shark mindlessly, so I didn’t even notice the other shark had come up behind it and opened its large mouth, which looked like it was about to bite my hand or eat me alive. I felt its teeth on my hand slightly. I feel like I felt my life flash right in front of my eyes. At that moment, I was really glad that I had really fast reflexes and I had managed to pull my hand away from it before anything worse had happened. I jumped away and screamed and cried. The rest of my family stood there surrounding me, confused. I told my mom, between sobs, about what happened. She stood there for a second, and then started laughing at me. The rest of my family also started laughing. I felt like I was dreaming. I felt like this was just some really bad nightmare, until my parents and my brother spoke to me. 
“Are you okay? That was really funny to see.” 
“What? How could that be funny?” 
“It just is. I mean, the shark probably wasn’t even coming at you and it just wanted to eat the food.” 
“Well, at that moment, it seemed like it wanted to eat me.” 
     I stood up straight and stopped crying. Now I felt like laughing too. When it first happened, I was really scared, but after thinking about it I realized that it wasn’t really that deep, and I got scared over nothing. I got back to the boat to calm myself down. I really thought about it and realized that I made a fool out of myself over nothing. I then got out of the boat again and went to my family and continued petting the sharks. I decided that I wasn’t going to let my fear get in the way of me continuing to have fun.