Speaking of maladjusted kids, this NY Post article reminds me of a funny story ....

“He made me do it!”

Jaws child star named police chief of Martha’s Vineyard town where movie was made

Jonathan Searle has been named the new police chief of Oak Bluffs — 47 years after he filmed Steven Spielberg’s iconic shark shocker in the same Massachusetts town that went by the fictional name of Amity in the classic summer blockbuster.

His appointment generated a big bite of buzz when the tiny town’s board announced it had voted 3-1 to offer the top cop role to the longtime community servant.

“I’m finding the whole thing quite funny myself!” Searle, 56, told The Post on Thursday amid all the fuss on the island located south of Cape Cod.

Oak Bluffs, which is home to just over 5,000 full-time residents, is part of ritzy Martha’s Vineyard, where “Jaws” was shot back in 1975.

In that movie, Searle and his real-life brother, Steven, memorably played two pranksters who caused mass panic on the beach after swimming into the ocean with a cardboard fin.

So, back in 1968, the summer we were 14 going on 15, my friend Michael Horton and I both earned scuba diving certificates and bought some gear. We were using it to — very lucratively — clean boat bottoms, but we were bored, and so came up with the brilliant idea of building a shark fin from plywood, painting it black, then slipping underwater and terrifying the swimmers at Tod’s Point. Mike had the boat, I had the plywood, but our plan was still in the conception stage when Greenwich Time posted a picture on its front page showing two GPD marine police and a very large shark they’d just shot in the waters off Tod’s. Our project was reluctantly put back on the shelf.

When Jaws came out in 1975, we were chagrined to see they’d filmed the exact scene, with the exact panic we had so gleefully envisioned creating seven years before. It would have been so perfect, damn it. Of course, had we proceeded, I might not be writing this today, but what price, artistry?