Friend on the Cover of National Enquirer

I was standing in line at a grocery store one day on a visit back home when my eyes casually glanced at the cover of the National Enquirer. I thought, "Wait a minute, this does not compute here. That is Glen." Looking closer, not only was it in fact my former high school friend/aquantaince Glen standing there in his bathing suit, but there was also a story about him, saying that he had been bitten by a giant shark. He had scars all over his legs.

I bought the newspaper thinking it was some kind of joke and I could ask Glen how modeling for the Enquirer worked.

Glen was more of a rival for my high-school girlfriend than a close friend, but I knew where he lived. When I got back to my mother's house, where I was staying during a visit, I called him up and found him at home. Although I am a little fuzzy on the details, I can still remember the photograph, and the story which went approximately like this:

What the Enquirer said was true. Glen had been diving off of some place like Moss Beach with two friends when he was attacked by a (great white?) shark. The shark's mouth was so big that the teeth marks on one side (of both legs) were down around his shins, and on the other were on his upper thighs. After nibbling on him, and thrashing him around in the murky Pacific waters for a while, the shark let him go and swam off.

Glen's friends pulled him onto a small rock where they clung to the slippery surface for a while and decided what to do. The shore was still several hundred yards away. Glen was going into shock, and was bleeding profusely from from his wounds. As you probably know, blood in the water attracts -- sharks! There were really only two choices to consider: leave Glen on the rock with one of the friends while the other swam to shore to get help, or have both friends drag Glen, bleeding, with them and hope for the best.

The friends (true friends indeed) decided it was not safe for Glen to remain on the rock. So -- back into the water the three of them went... along with the gigantic shark and the blood. What a choice this must have been! With the two friends sprinting, and Glen doing what he could, they made it back to shore.

I believe that Glen has fully recovered, save for the extensive scars on his legs. The moral of this story, if there is one, is that sometimes you can believe what you read in the Enquirer.