Michele A’Court

Ilike the thoughts that arrive in your head when you are on holiday. Maybe it’s the absence of Netflix that offers your mind a moment to make its own small entertainments. Or perhaps your brain is moving so slowly it gets a chance to watch itself think, and be amused by its processes. We are on the beach in Rarotonga where I am watching young coconut palms twisting and circling in the breeze. ‘‘Palm fronds move like a Len Lye kinetic sculpture,’’ my mind says, and then corrects itself. ‘‘A Len Lye sculpture is like a palm frond, you doofus. It’s the other way round.’’

I like a good simile. My favourite books last year were from writers like Patricia Lockwood and Megan Dunn, queens of the sharp, funny, unexpected metaphor. A way of explaining how the world is for you, to people for whom the world is different.

Sometimes I hold an idea in my head for a long time – ‘‘This is a thing I would like to explain, what parallels can I draw to help with that?’’ – before I find one.

Here’s one I found in the ocean. A wolf whistle or a sexist joke or an unsolicited comment about how you dress or where you fit on someone’s ‘‘shag-able scale’’ are like the momentary possibility of a shark.

I’ve been snorkelling for years. Jeremy also dives but I have holes in an ear drum and need to stay stay closer to the surface. Even so, I enjoy that sense of liquid flight over watery cities in another world.

My husband is afraid of sharks. Not just in the way we all might be, but a proper phobia. He has a story to go with it – the origin of it – and other stories that illustrate the depth of the fear. No swimming pools after dark. He can’t talk himself round, and neither can you. It is hardwired now, part of who he is.

The first time we snorkelled together, I found a parrotfish and wanted him to see it, so I tapped him on the ankle. Stupid idea, but I was new to this, and didn’t know the rules of undersea etiquette. He, of course, thought the tap on the ankle was a shark.

When he discovered that it was me, there wasn’t one of those, ‘‘Ha ha! Thought you were a shark!’’ fall-about-laughing moments. There was cortisol and adrenaline, fear and anger – the aftermath of the moment he thought the thing he most feared had happened.

I have learned not to tap anyone on the ankle. It’s the least I can do.

The purpose of this metaphor is teach people not to shout shit

at women from passing cars.