After 35 years, I'm still trying to explain to the world that I DID NOT have a starring role in the movie JAWS.

I hate to throw my Mom under the bus, but she taught me a very good lesson about excessive parental bragging. We all know that parental exaggerations come from a good place (that's the kind me talking) but there is nothing worse than parents who go overboard and brag incessantly.

After I graduated from high school, one of my best friends (aka Josie) and I drove 14 hours to Martha's Vineyard to find a summer job and make some extra bucks before going to college. We had given ourselves a couple of weeks to land a job; knowing that if we weren't successful, we would have to come home. Since that was before the acronym of NFW, we were hyper motivated to find something, anything that would fund our dream of being out on our own.

Upon arrival to the island, we heard that Universal was filming a movie and our first thought was that we should go to their offices and offer to make lunches, sweep the floor or do the famous coffee and donuts gophering thing.

The person in charge of local hires said the only availability was being an extra, a job that was initially a 4 day gig.

"What does it pay?" I asked.

"75 dollars a day, lunch included, no overtime" he replied.

We almost fell off our seats. That would cover two weeks rent in our rooming house. We had our Polaroids snapped and were told to report to the beach the next day in our bathing suit gear.

I remember calling my mother from a payphone and telling her not to worry because Josie and I had found great paying jobs as extras in a movie called "JAWS". The excitement in my voice was about the salary, not the job, but my mother had heard only one thing...job in a movie.

Thanks to the creative genius of the young Steven Spielberg, our jobs were extended for 6 more days. But it wasn't easy...we froze our asses off going in and out of the 58 degree water pretending to run away from sharks. I thought my nipples would never go flat. I fantasized about getting a waitressing job (which I later did and it was way more fun). But the money...oh the money...

Back in Pittsburgh, my mother had already written press releases for the local papers. She even wanted me to appear on the local talk shows upon my return. It was all she could talk about and it got bigger and bigger as time went on. To this day, her friends still refer to me as " the daughter who starred in JAWS".

Talk about riding a long wave...