Going Left Shark

Like many Americans, I watched the Super Bowl a couple of days ago with my family. For the most part, we were not invested in the outcome of the game, with the exception of our youngest who a year ago became a staunch New England Patriots fan (presumably just to vex the rest of us). We were tuned in for the spectacle and the ads and the cultural experience. No one wants to be left out of the conversation on Post Super Bowl Monday when the country is engaging in deep commercial analysis and heated game commentary. One thing our entire family agreed upon was that we were looking forward to seeing what Katy Perry would do at half-time. While none of us are huge Katy Perry fans, we all like her well enough and were decidedly more interested in her show than any of the half-time shows in the past five years. So we watched.

When Katy came out dressed in flames, channeling her inner Katniss Everdeen, and riding a jungle cat for Roar, we were duly impressed. But when Teenage Dream began and the sharks came out, we lost our minds. Seriously. We couldn’t stop giggling over those dang sharks. Joe, our resident Sharkboy, immediately requested a similar costume for Halloween in 9 months. The dancing beach balls and palm trees were fun too, but the sharks were stars. As good as Katy was, no one could mistake that she was being upstaged by sharks. Twitterverse blew up with all kinds of hashtags…#KatyPerrySharks, #dancingsharks, and #superbowlsharks. And pretty soon there were dancing shark memes to pass around. The country apparently felt the same way we did. We fell in love with them en masse.

And nearly as quickly as the shark love affair began, people began singling out the Left Shark (the one on the viewer’s left) as their favorite. There’s always a favorite, right? While the Right Shark was flawlessly performing a highly choreographed dance routine, the Left Shark looked a little off cue, a little goofy, a little devil-may-care. He was the class clown, there for the laugh. Soon everyone was tweeting about #LeftShark. There was an immediate assumption that the Left Shark forgot his choreography and that’s why his movements weren’t in sync with the Right Shark. But the show’s choreographer went on record saying that the Left Shark performed exactly as he was supposed to. And everyone loved him, including me. Right Shark? What Right Shark? Who cares? So conventional. Boooooring!

This morning, though, I was thinking a bit about Right Shark and how he’s been relatively ignored while Left Shark has gone onto Internet infamy. People are saying that he should have been the Super Bowl MVP. I can almost hear Right Shark using his most Jan Brady voice and exclaiming loudly, “Left Shark! Left Shark! Left Shark!” It seems so unfair. I can relate to Right Shark…out there, doing his job, behaving as expected, and feeling unnoticed and under-appreciated. We tend to overlook the thing that is a constant. We tend to notice the novel, the amusing, the different.

Still…there’s something valuable to be learned from the Left Shark phenomenon. We admire someone who can cut loose and have a good time. We laugh at the class clown. We appreciate the one who is brave enough to stand out. We all have that friend who, while perhaps unreliable, always gets invited because they’re just that much fun that the occasional hassle they present is 100% worth it. They say that, in the end, it’s the way you make someone feel that matters most. So we love the Left Sharks of this world because they spread joy, reminding us that life is too short to take seriously.

Go a little Left Shark this week. See what happens.