Mammy Water

Every young man dreams of being successful, winning the Olympics, dating the most beautiful woman in the world - but 22 year old Eric Ducharme from Florida, dreams of being a merman!




A mermaid is the male version of the exotic and mystical part-human and part fish sea creature. Ducharme is a self-professed merman (the male version).

As legend goes, these creatures make themselves visible to ships and seamen, luring them in with sonorous songs, before snatching them into the dark abyss of the sea.

In Ducharme's case, he'd be looking to snatch a lady into the dark abyss of his. . . What?!

Anyway, this guy eats, sleeps, and breathes mermaids, and tries to impersonate them whenever possible, which is pretty much everytime.

His route to becoming a merman began when as a child - according to his website - his grandparents took him to an underwater theater and a woman in a mermaid costume swam by blowing kisses to the audience; at age six, Ducharme's father hired two mermaids to swim up to a dock where the boy was eating his birthday cake. When he was 13, Ducharme created his company Mertailor, LLC and sold his own handcrafted tails made from garbage bags and various fabrics.

Now business at Mertailors is booming, and his wetsuits made from silicone, urethanes, and latex rubbers in different colors and textures of scales and fins range from $185 for the spandex tail to $2,759 for the silicon version and there's even a kid's tail priced at $169.

The tails have been featured in photo shoots on Germany's "Next Top Model", in advertisements for Skittles and on "Saturday Night Live" in the music video "I'm on a Boat" featuring T-Pain. Ducharm's client list even includes Lady Gaga.

"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.

"It's taking me a really long time to kind of understand my place in life," Ducharme says of his obsession. Three times a week, he slips into his shiny handmade fin to swim Florida’s natural springs, an hour and a half drive from his home in Crystal River. He calls it "mermaiding" a time to escape the pressures of the real world. "When I put on a tail I feel transformed," says Ducharme, who can hold his breath for four minutes at a time. "I feel like I'm starting to enter into a different world when I hit the water."

All we can say is: Ducharme CAN NOT get away with this stunt here in Nigeria, where everyone is trying as hard as they can to get away from the mermaid phenomenon (known locally as Mammy Water).

If he tries it, he's likely to get all the mammy water attention he's been craving for. . .

. . . And more. . . MUCH MORE.