Like any other 22-year-old Floridian, Eric Ducharme loves to swim, except when he dives into the water, he trades his swim trunks for a floppy tail.
Ducharme is a self-proclaimed merman, a mystical male counterpart to the mermaid. As the legend goes, these seductive sea creatures with the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, make themselves visible to ships during thunder storms and would lure the opposite sex into the water with their siren-like singing.
According to a story in The Daily Mail, Ducharme says he eats, sleeps, and breathes mermaids and mermen and tries to impersonate them whenever he can. “It’s a lifestyle. It’s a path in life that I have chosen,” he says during a Wednesday night episode of TLC’s “My Crazy Obsession,” a reality show that follows people whose adoration for objects has become an obsession.
I – Word Understanding
Trade for – exchange with
Mystical – difficult to understand
Lure – seduce; to make a person do something by offering something in return
Siren-like singing – attractive and beautiful sound
Impersonate – to pretend (act) to be another person
II – Have your say
1.Are mermaids true? Christopher Columbus reported seeing three female forms which rose high out of the sea. During the WWII, Japanese soldiers witnessed several mermaids on the shores of the Kei Islands.
2.Obsession is a state in which someone thinks about someone or something constantly or frequently especially in a way that is not normal. Do you have any obsession?
3.OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder) is characterized by a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency. Do you know someone who has OCD?
