The arrival of hot weather in Maine never fails to get me dreaming of my annual great escape to the beaches of New Jersey.

With the first blast of furnacelike temperatures a week ago, I was immediately transported in my imagination to that lovely ocean world to the south, where in a couple of months I would be bobbing in the warm surf all day and riding the breakers until I collapsed exhausted and happy onto the beach blanket.

Which is why the recent newspaper story about a teen-ager in New Jersey being bitten on the leg by a great white shark could not have come at a more inopportune time. The 17-year-old surfer, whose injury required 50 stitches, said he was in the waters off the seaside community of Surf City when he felt a stabbing pain in his ankle. It was, he said, “like somebody hit me in the foot with a baseball bat.”

Judging by the tooth marks on his leg and foot, local experts figured the young man had been chomped by a small great white, the first such confirmed attack in those waters since 1975. But the two sentences in the story that caught my attention, and made me question the wisdom of my coming vacation destination, were the surprising one that read, “Great whites are not uncommon off New Jersey,” and another that predicted, “If they find good feeding, they may be up here all summer long.”

I must admit that is much more shark information than I really care to carry around with me for the next few weeks. The thought that I soon might be forced to recreate in the toothy company of great white sharks, small ones or otherwise, is enough to make me consider becoming strictly a freshwater tourist instead.

It was just last summer, along the same stretch of shoreline where the teen-ager was bitten, that I had a rare opportunity to swim uncomfortably close to a shark. I didn’t know of the shark’s presence while I was in the water, which I now regard as a fortunate turn of events. Had I spotted the creature cruising nearby, I probably would have instantly initiated a panicky and splashy dash for shore, which might have advertised me unnecessarily to the shark as a large and meaty morsel that might be worth a munch or two.

I was floating on my back at the time, staring up at the cloudless blue sky, when I heard the persistent tweet-tweet of a faraway whistle. When I looked across the suddenly empty ocean toward shore – where did the other swimmers go? – the lifeguard was standing in his tall wooden stand, motioning me with distinctive arm signals to get out of the water immediately. I rode the next wave in and walked up to the lifeguard to find out what was going on.

“Would you care to tell my why you whistled me out of the water or is it better that I don’t know?” I asked the young man.

“Probably better you don’t know,” he said with a grin, which was his diplomatic way of informing me that I had been swimming about 20 or 30 yards from a good-sized shark.

As we talked, I learned that another lifeguard doing his swimming drills had first spotted the shark, which he estimated to be 8 feet long,. The lifeguard saw the tail break the surface in front of him, then the dorsal fin. He hightailed it back to shore to pass the word to the other guard and to get his whistle blowing. Soon, people were milling around near the lifeguard stand, asking excitedly what was out there.

“Shark,” I said nonchalantly, trying to sound like someone who thought nothing of swimming in the vicinity of sharks. About 20 minutes later, the lifeguard issued an all-clear and told us we could return to the water if we wished.

“Just stay alert while you’re out there,” he cautioned.

A few of us did venture back in, aware that our precious remaining vacation days would be ruined were we to succumb to an unreasonable fear of sharks, which inhabit the coastal waters from Maine to Florida even if we rarely see them.

But much of the fun of wallowing lazily in the heaving sea was gone for me, at least temporarily. It’s awfully hard to feel carefree when you’re constantly on the lookout for rogue sharks with razor-sharp teeth, when every clump of seaweed in the distance begins to look suspiciously like the sandpapery hide of a passing mako or thresher.

I had sharks on the brain for a while after that, naturally, but they managed to swim politely out of my consciousness not long after my beach vacation was over. Eventually, I was at peace with sharks once again.

But just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, Jaws himself shows up at my favorite summer haunts and gets the beach tourists buzzing. I haven’t even donned a bathing suit yet and already I’m back on high alert.