I
had gained a lot of confidence from my new found interaction with
girls and I thought junior high was going to be okay. It was right in
time for a fresh start. For the first time I had done my school
shopping on my terms with my money to buy clothes that I wanted. I
thought I looked pretty snappy but that was because I didn't know it
pretty snappy looked like. When the first day of school came around
we went our homeroom class, which for me was history, I got to sit
next to a kid named Sean and then another guy named Shawn who for
some reason we started calling Ray. When it came time for us to pick
a partner to be locker partners with me and Santaquin Shawn paired
up. We'd never really been friends but at least I knew him so it was
a match of convenience. About the second day I was quite a bit better
friends with the new Sean from Payson and I wished I would have
shared a locker with him instead. I was always worried that my new
friends were about to turn on me because it seemed too good to be
true that I was hanging out with cool kids. All the friends I made at
Timberline were all there too and they were ninth graders which meant
that they were big fish in a little pond and we were friends so I
gained acceptance to the older kids inner circle. All of the sudden
I'd gone from the least popular kid in school or close to it to
pretty well liked kid who had friends in the ninth grade. In classes
people wanted me to come and sit by them and people were
acknowledging me in the hall. For the first time in my life I had a
girl come across the room and ask to sit by me and my friend Kevin
from Timberline. I was in culture shock and I liked it.
Fashion Shoot, Hey Ladies
I mentioned briefly the photo shoot I had to send pictures to the
girls but I didn't fully develop the flavor of how sad it was. I
asked my sister who owned a 35mm camera to help me take some pictures
to send to some girls. What I had in mind was a few school picture
like pictures of me sitting and smiling. She said that would not do
and we needed to sex them up a little. She picked out clothes for me,
a two tone green stripped shirt with a bit of a surfer feel too it. A
K-Mart shopping surfer. Some cut off and rolled up shorts which was
the style at the time and no shoes as to make the photos look more
playful and spontaneous. She had me do some Mervyns catalog model
poses as well as some action shots with a basketball. The worst one
was probably the one where I was hanging from our monkey bars and
trying to look sultry. I really wish I could find those photos I just
looked for an hour because they are so shamefully bad but I cannot
find them. We hitched a ride with my mom to the local grocery store
in the next town over and got the pictures one hour-ed. Ah, the olden
days. Then we sorted through and my sister picked out the sexiest
ones. Which, in hind sight, is a lot a bit creepy. We mailed them off
and then I waited for the call from the girls saying they got them, they got them and pronounced me cute. Good, cute is good.
How Much Do You Bench?
We four friends walked in to an almost empty Junior High building with me in the
lead somehow. We went by the office and picked up our schedules and
walked around the school and saw the girls we were there to meet. My
breathing went into vapor lock and I started shaking I was so nervous
I could barely talk but I was still the point man among my more timid
friends. I was working up the courage to go talk to them when my
friend Quin who was always there with a supportive word told me to,
'just go talk to them you fag.' I did just go talk to them after I
walked passed them a few times down a hall too small to walk passed
someone without common courtesy demanding a hailing. I finally got up
enough courage and went and said, “Hey hows it going?” They said
they were fine and giggled and I was still shaking and my throat was
dry so I held my schedule in both hands and asked the girls what
classes they had. We had none together but at least talking to them
calmed my nerves a little and I started to loosen up. Not on the
phone loosened up and charming but I was at least controlling the
shaking in my hands and voice. The girls asked why my friends
wouldn't come over and I told them it was because they were pussies.
Harsh? No, not for a fag like me. I waved at them and Quin, Billy and
Garret moseyed over and stood roughly behind me and still didn't talk
to the girls but kind of punched at and pushed me a little and talked
to me. I introduced the boys and introduced the girls and Quin was
the first of the second string to make an effort at some
conversation. This is going to sound out outlandish but I swear this
was his exact question, “ So, how much do you all bench?” The
girls said that they didn't know what that meant. I told them that
Quin was asking them how much weight they were able to lift on the
bench press exercise. They all laughed and said that they had never
attempted a bench press. Quin reading the cues somehow worse then I
had been reading clues all day started telling them about his
exercise routine and that he could bench 150 lbs. That may have been
impressing to the ladies if they had any idea what that meant and how
much that really was but they didn't so they just looked at him
politely and nodded. Quins bumbling was so comically bad that it
completely redeemed me and I was saved no matter how goofy I had been
in the beginning this was so much worse that I was liberated. All of
the fear and hesitation left me and I was able to just be myself
which for the first time in my life seemed to be a good thing. The
girls were laughing at my jokes and we were having fun when Billy's
sister showed up to pick us up I wasn't too sure I was going to take
her up on her offer, I just didn't know how to let her down easy. I
was so happy that I was smiling and on the verge of laughing all the
way home and the rest of the day. In my middle school every time I
interacted with girls especially cute girls there was always a subtle
undercurrent of revulsion and fear that someone would see them
talking to me and make fun of them. In this new school with new girls
they just wanted to hang out and listen to my jokes and stories so I
lauded their good taste.
Billy's Cute Sister
Billy
was a friend of a friend who was always just sort of hanging around
and coming along to things that I am not sure how he was invited to.
He was an okay kid he was just a little over eager to please and
suffered from a low self esteem that made him try too hard to make
people like him. He
did have one really cool thing about him though and that was a sister
who was six years older and super hot and not overly prudish in her
clothing selection. I used to try and stop by to see Billy on
Saturdays because his sister would often be out in shorts and a
bikini top cleaning her Jeep and that was something I was interested
in accidentally seeing as often as I could make it plausible. On the
day we were going to meet the girls that my brother and his friend
had picked up for us Billy asked if she could give us a ride and she
said yes. I rolled up on my bike dressed in what I felt was my best
first impression clothes. Billy's sister asked if I was coming with
and when I told her yes she said I could sit in front with her
because I was cute. She started flirting with me in what I didn't
know at the time was the kind of flirting a cute girl will sometimes
do to make a self conscious kid blush and keep blushing because they
think it is funny. It is not funny. She told us stories of how she
out ran the cops in her Jeep by cutting across a fiend where he
couldn't follow. I bought it and elevated her even higher in my
pantheon beautiful and dangerous, yes, thank-you. She Kept teasing me
about how these girls were so lucky that cute boys were coming to
meet them and that if they didn't want to go out with me she would.
I, being socially tone deaf, was taking her seriously, I thought that
this cute 18-year-old girl was legitimately offering to date me and
it panicked me a little. She dropped us off and asked if I was going
to give her a good-bye kiss. I blushed and said no. She told us she
would come and pick us up in an hour. We headed in to meet the new
girls for the first time after talking to them on the phone for
countless hours. I screwed up my courage and knew I always had
Billy's sister far a fall back plan. I was terrified and my heart was
pounding my hands were sweating and my ears were starting to ring as
my mouth went dry. Once more into the breech, there were girls to
meet and a image for me to uphold.
My Brother and His Friend Pick Us Up Some Chicks
I was not brave at getting girls and I usually had to only flirt with
girls that I knew from school or church. My little brother had a
friend who was as bold as they come though and he was always going up
to girls to get their numbers and chat them up. Once when I was in
seventh grade and my brother was in fifth his friend approached some
cute girls from the next town over that were at our elementary school
putting on a don't-do-drugs song and dance show. He chatted them up
and got their numbers and then they realized that he was just a baby,
a fifth grade baby. When you are twelve two years is an unfathomable
chasm of maturity that no reasonable girl would venture to approach
let alone cross. My brother and his friend brought home the girl's
number and my friends and I thought we would give them a call they
answered and all three girls that my brother's friend hit on were at
the house we called. It was awesome we talked with them on both of
our lines for quite a while and with my courage bolstered by the anonymity of a cold call I was actually pouring on the charm and
saying very flirty things which would make the girls giggle and my friend Quin who had been silent on the other line for almost all of
the conversation chime in to say, 'Shut up Gause, you queer.' What a
strange and magical time it is in a young man's life when he is
called a queer for hitting on the girls by the one too embarrassed to
talk. We called them a few other times and talked a lot. My sister
even took some pictures of us that we could send to the girls and
they sent us some back. Finally, one day when we were going to pick
up our schedules at the Junior High we arranged with the girls to
meet in person and that is a really funny story as well that I will
get too right after I tell you about this hot chick who gave us a
ride to meet the girls.
Counting To Three For Fairness Sake
If I were to describe myself as an older brother I would probably say
cruel but fair. Then amend that upon further reflection to unfair. We
loved shooting stuff around our house with the two pump up bb guns,
one rife and one pistol, that we owned. We would set up toys at the
end of the hall and try and shoot them down from the other end of the
hall. Sometimes we would set the toys up in front of the piano and
try and shoot them from across the living room. Misses would chip the
enamel which we didn't know until years later and my mom was trying
to understand the pocking of her piano and we played dumb. You may
think that some kids who would shoot air guns in the house would not
have to play dumb but no one asked you. The other really fun game was
to load the guns with q-tips and shoot my little brother and sister,
which is as fun as it sounds. Getting shot with a q-tip from a
pump-up bb pistol is not very painful but it does have a certain
aversive property. I would yell out, 'Jose! 1...2....3...' and then
shoot him if he had not made a hasty retreat. Just shooting someone
is not as fun as seeing someone scramble for a few seconds before you
shoot them. I would reload and start the three count again and again.
Sometimes it was Jose's turn and sometimes Beth's. That is why I need
to further re-amend to 'kind of fair' because I did make sure
everyone of the unwilling participants got a turn and that they each
got a three second count to absent themselves from the field of fire.
That is kind of fair by any reckoning.
Being Cool and Mixing-A-Lot
I mentioned the one
time that my half uncle David came down and we went to learn
chemistry. I had never met him before but he was a really cool guy.
His mom stayed in the house in a middle room that was vacated for her
privacy and David got to stay in the cab over camper. That is true
freedom right there. We would go out every day and hand out with him
in the cab over and he would talk to us about cool stuff. One of the
best things he had was a cd player which, though not exactly rare in
the early 90's, were by no means common. Not only did he have a cd
player he had cd's. Awesome. He had some gangsta rap from the Ghetto
Boys which was a little hard core for me but I didn't let on. He also
had two albums from a local Seattle rapper that when by the name
Sir-Mix-Alot. This guy was more into the rhythm and rime then all the
hard core stuff and it was pretty funny. Many people now know
Mix-Alot from his best selling hit 'I Like Big Butts' which would
blow up the charts in the coming years but when our Uncle gave us our
first taste he was still unknown. We were hooked and I think my
brother and I bought most of his albums and while he was by no means
the soundtrack of my squandered youth he was in the rotation, heavily
in the rotation. Ten or twelve years later when we were in college my
brother noticed that Mix would be playing at a bar about an hour
equal distant between where he was living and where I was. We
couldn't miss the opportunity and made the trip and were rewarded
with seeing one of the icons of our childhood take pains to remind us
during his set that he had been called a one hit wonder but people
overlooked his other hit. Come on people two hits is nothing to scoff
at and especially should not be cut in half for the sake of a jokey
phrase.
I Sing at My Great-Grandfather's Funeral
A few months or years after I met him for the first and only time, my great-grandfather died. I
was not sad because he was a complete stranger that I had met one
time. As they were organizing the funeral they thought it would be
nice to have one of his grandsons sing his favorite song at the
funeral. None would. They decided to try for great-grandkids but the
way my great aunt wanted it she wanted a soloist to sweetly sing the
verse and the other kids sing the chorus. No one else would agree to
sing solo so I volunteered with the caveat that I was not a good
singer. I wasn't, and I wasn't being modest like my great aunt
thought I was just always willing to volunteer, as I have mentioned
before. I was not really sure what I had volunteered for but my
siblings and I got dressed in our Sunday best and went to the funeral
home for a quick run-through. I was supposed to stand a little in
front of the other kids and sing into the microphone and then they
would join in without individual mics. The run through demonstrated
my horrible lack of musical ability but it was too late and my
unsubtle great aunt open lamented my lack of talent and that she
wished I would have been better. They had some talks and comments and
then it was our turn. Not many people were there and only a few were
crying, but it was the reserved sadness of those morning a
nonogenarian they barely knew. My singing was so bad, almost
comically so, that I noticed that many people stopped crying to fully
dedicate their faculties to witnessing this abomination. Well, the
best news was that it was over soon and like a healing salve I was
able to dry the tears of those who mourned by the pure white hot
horror of my amplified auditory assault. I was not even praised in
the perfunctory manner customary of recognition for any job done by a
child. I guess praise was too far from what the performance deserved
and the cognitive dissonance that would have been created may have
ripped the fabric of the social-courtesy continuum. I have never been
asked to sing in any solo capacity since.
I Meet My Great-Grandfather
I
did not know my great-grandfather I only met him once and then he
died. The one time that I met him was the summer when I was eleven and
my maternal grandma Joanne had come down to Utah for a visit with my
half-uncle David. It happened to be the first time I had ever met my
mentally ill and reclusive grandmother and her son David. We loaded
up one day to go and visit her dad in a nearby town. When we got
there we knocked at the door and rang the bell but no-one answered
even though we could see my grandfather and his brother puttering
about. We banged louder and they still didn't notice but the door was
locked. I had to go around to the back to see if there was a window
or door open and there was one in the downstairs back that I climbed
through. So technically I burglarized my great-grandfather's house
before I even met him. I walked to the front door without saying hi
or even making an effort to get my grandfather's attention I just
walked quickly to the front door and let my newly met grandmother and
uncle in. She caught up with her dad whom she had not seen in twenty
years with a perfunctory hug and kiss which neither of them seemed
that interested in and then she helped him get his hearing aid in and
absented herself. The idea was that my great-grandfather was
supposed to teach my teenage uncle and I the ins and outs of
chemistry a topic in which he was well versed. We really didn't want
to learn chemistry and he really didn't want to teach us but there we
were refugees on a living-room lifeboat twisting in the currants set
forth by others and we were waiting it out. He got out a book that he
wrote for a chemistry class and started telling us that the thing to
know about chemistry was that 90% was useless because most elements
were too rare or the reactions were not possible in ordinary
conditions. At that point his hearing aid started malfunctioning and
ringing quite loudly. I say quite loudly and that was from my
perspective and he didn't seem to mind. Until he took it out and held
it at arms length with one hand as he pointed out a modified
periodic table that excluded the unusual and unimportant elements.
David and I were trying to bear the noise of the thing and pay a
little attention but we were really not interested in the chemistry
or this old man that allegedly shared some of our genetic material. We
were saved in a few hours and went back home where we took a pile of
quarters and my brother down to the local greasy spoon where we spent
about six hours beating Street Fighter 2 with E. Honda. So the day
was not wasted.
Freeway Jumping
We lived on the poor side of the tracks alongside messieurs Riff and
Raff. The rich, not on the government cheese rich, kids lived on the
other side of the freeway called the bench. I generally stuck to
friends from my half of town for my first twelve years. Then in the
seventh grade I had made friends with two kids from the bench, my new
best friend, Cole and the girl who had got me into plenty of trouble
in the seventh grade. Friends on the bench were more worldly and
offered entry into the world of mature naughtiness. Cole and I didn't
get into too much trouble but that girl always had something going on
in the borderlands of morality and legality that she offered freely
to anyone willing to come along for the ride. One day in the summer
between seventh and eighth grade she called and asked me to go toilet
papering with her and some other kids. It was awesome no girl had
ever invited me to do anything let alone something crazy at night I
was ready to go but I needed a plan. Luckily my parents erred on the
side of trusting that I wouldn't be up to any shenanigans because I
was such a massive nerd. I told them I was going to sleep out in my
fort and they said fine. Mission accomplished. At 10 I sneaked out of
the fort and with my heart pounding contemplating my imminent capture
and punishment I snuck with unnecessary caution for an unnecessary
distance away from my house. I was no troublemaker so I didn't know
how sneaky was sneaky enough. Once I figured I was clear I jogged the
two miles across town to where they said we were going to meet up.
They were there. That might not sound too amazing but the whole jog
there I was overcome with a terrifying certainty that they wouldn't
want me coming along and would have ditched me. I was about as happy
as I had ever been in my life to be hanging out with some really cool
kids at their invitation. We decided on toilet papering a family in
that neighborhood's house which for some reason had always been
singled out for abuse and vandalism. I was too nervous to enjoy
defacement deflowering but I understand that is what usually happens
the first time. The father came out and yelled at us to come back
which in my disorientation and fear was a command that I almost
obeyed. Gosh-danged rookie mistake could have cost me my freedom and
dignity. Luckily, I just ran with the pack and got away clean until
the blue and reds started flashing up the street. Running from the
cops was something that I had never fathomed but everyone ran for the
fence that guarded the four-lane freeway and started jumping over.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, holy flippin' whoa. Welcome to the danger zone. I
was so jacked up on peer pressure and adrenaline that I jumped from
about six feet back from the fence grabbed the top bar and bounded
over in the one fluid motion of a seasoned ne'er-do-well. We were
running across the median and over the other lane when Santaquin's
finest suggested we come back and we laughed and declined his offer.
One of the girls gave him the bird and another told him he was
welcome to kiss our asses. The only way to the side of the freeway we
were heading too was to head a mile back to a viaduct and cross over
and come back a mile by which time we would be long gone. Long, long
gone. We all ran to a field and fell over laughing and breathing
hard. I felt so magnificently included and involved and happy. We sat
around and talked for a while as we watched the cop drive back and
forth up the frontage road and shine his light in the bushes blocks
away from our spot. We broke it up and everyone headed home which
meant I had two more miles to walk home but it was some of the best
miles I had ever covered as I relived the highlights in my mind. I
was not caught by the cops or my parents that night.
Truth or Dare “Lets Don't”
I always liked to give off the air of off handed savoir faire and
effortless bravery. This was to keep people from calling my bluff.
Most of the time it worked but on occasion the bluff was called with
cringe-worthy results. One of the most memorable and still
embarrassing to me was one day in the summer between seventh and
eighth grade my older sister and I and two of the more wild girls I
knew went out for the day looking for trouble at a few local houses
and haunts. We stopped at a house of one of my sister's friends and
sat around talking which turned into a game of truth or dare, as
these things sometimes will. Inevitably, as there where three girls
and one was my sister the dare turned to me kissing a girl. My heart
rate went up my chest tightened and my hands went sweaty. I had never
kissed a girl on the lips and I didn't know how and I was locked up.
Play it cool. I offered to kiss the girl but on the cheek. The damn
cheek. That is not debonair, that is not cool, that is sure as hell
not playing it cool and it still haunts me in quite moments of
introspection. I kissed her on the cheek and then it came around
again and cheek kissing was right out my sister said I had to kiss
the other girl on the mouth and I said fine but we were going in the
other room. We got up and walked into the bathroom and when we got in
I begged the girl, 'let's don't and say we did'. She said she wanted
to kiss me but I refused, she agreed to lie for me and we came out. I
am so lame. We went around mostly truth-ing from then on and then
wrapped it up and went home. They shared my chickening out when I was
not in tow and they had a good laugh about it. In my defense I did
later make out with both of those girls and got rave reviews on my
technique. I guess I just didn't want to ruin the experience for them
before I had a chance to perfect my style and moves. No, actually
that's a lie I am just a weenie. This is actually still very
embarrassing to me to admit so I was trying to save it but then I
felt guilty and repented myself of the lie.
Going to Heaven on an Ironing Board for Reals
 |
| Get Cocky And We Will Teach You A Lesson In Trust, Don't. |
Halloween Pranks
My brother Matt and I used to love Halloween because you were
basically encouraged to abuse other kids. We loved the pranks for the
pure joy of it and to impress and entertain each other and our
friends. One of our all time best moves was getting a big bag and
putting tricks and treats in it which would throw the kids off the
trail before we sprung the trap and saw the sadness on their faces.
For example a group of four kids may come to the door trick-or
treating and I would answer holding a big bag and ask the obligatory
“what are you all?” questions. Then I would give one kid a huge
handful of candy, the next kid a single candy, which if he complains
about gets that taken back. The third kid would get a huge carrot and
the fourth a frozen fish. The looks on their faces were priceless.
Another great trick was to give them treats inappropriate for the
situation. Most people agree that ice cream is a fine treat,
generally, but not when it is going in a plastic bag full of other
treats. It, in point of fact, makes quite a mess. So when kids would
come to the door I would would have a heaping scoop ready and out of
site to share with our costumed guests. Another great treat was a cup
of apple juice poured right into the bag, soupy goodness for the
whole night's candy. We lived in the middle of the block which made
it an intimidating journey to come all the way back to our house. We
rewarded those brave souls with some ambush scares which could and
sometimes did include a saw-less chainsaw wielding person coming out
from behind a shadowed tree. Good, clean, fun until you do not
notice that the little boy who you have just given a cup of cider to
lube up his haul and starts crying was accompanied that evening by a
rather burly looking father. That young man had it made up to him by
getting a generous helping of our candy when his dad asked what the
hell we thought he were doing. Nothing my fine sir, nothing at all.
Hot Rock! Hot Rocks!
Later the next year my dad took his open water certification group to
bear lake and the whole family came up. My mom who had taught
survival in collage told us that they used to warm up rocks in the
fire and then put them in their sleeping rolls to help keep them warm
on cold nights. For some reason this really peeked my little sisters
interest and she started chanting hot rocks, hot rocks! She found all
sorts of great candidates for fire warming and was rolling them into
the fire and then rolling them out when they were hot. It seemed like
harmless fun but I had been helping out diving all day and I headed
to bed early. In the middle of the night I woke up needing to pee and
sallied forth to commune with nature with my shoes off. I was about
twenty feet from my tent and almost upon a likely looking bush when
my foot came down squarely on a scalding hot rock that burned the
skin off of the arch of my foot and blistered the meat that was left.
I cussed, and screamed and called out oaths of grievous bodily harm
on my idiot sister. You have probably guessed why I have used the
term 'Hot Rocks, Hot Rocks!” as shorthand for negligent stupidity
in the years since. My distress woke up my mom and dad in the camper
and my mom helped to treat and bandage my foot while I held forth on
my opinion of the wisdom of telling a little girl about hot rocks and
then not supervising her while she rolled them out of the fire and
into walk paths. My dad told me I should not have gone out to pee
without my shoes on. I felt that this was not the time to blame the
victim and I promised I was going to cause my sister some pain when I
caught her unawares and went to bed. I was unable to dive the next
day because I could not put on a boot or fin and I couldn't walk well
for a couple weeks. I can't recall getting even.
Christy Wins a Sail Boat
This is not totally related to scuba diving but and interesting
coincidence story. The guy who was my scuba instructor was an
electrician and my dad's work sometimes required electrical parts.
One day my sister went with my dad to work and they had to pick up
some parts at an electrical wholesaler where they were running a
promotion where the grand prize was a small sail boat. Our instructor
had been entering the contest every day he went in there which had
been nearly a hundred times but when the cards where drawn my
sister's one entry filtered to the top. She was the proud owner of a
sailboat and our instructor was livid he could not believe his bad
luck. He took every opportunity to mention it and rant about it while
we were in his class and after. We had that little boat for many
years and would take it down to the local ponds and sail back and
forth until it came all the way a part and we junked it. On the topic
of or instructor's bad luck he was killed in a train accident when
his truck was rear-ended by a lady who pushed him into the railroad
crossing. The moral, of course, is if you loose a raffle by long odds
go ahead and double up on your life insurance because your days are
numbered. This may not be a hard and fast rule but why risk it?
Rip Tide
The night after the woman was life flighted off of our deck we were
off Catalina Island ready for a night dive. I had never dove at night
which was already making me nervous and then the captain told us that
there was a rapid rip tide that would suck us out to sea if we missed
the tow line so we should make sure and get it right. Sucked out to
sea sounded bad so I made sure I knew where the line was and when the
dive was set to wrap up. We went down and it was amazing everything I
pointed my light at was alive and moving and we saw sharks and a huge
sea bass. I got close enough to even tough a three foot shark and I
was ecstatic but like all good thing the dive ended and my dad got us
in position to ascend and intercept the drag line to get us into the
boat safely. While we ascended I got turned around and ended up 30
feet from the drag rope and the force of the rip tide was starting to
pull me away from the boat at a pretty good clip. I was terrified and
swimming as hard as I could but in the confusion I forgot to put in
my snorkel and I was swimming with my head out of water which is no
way to make headway. I was trying to scream and get someone's attention but I couldn't do anything but flail and feel the ocean pulling me away from the boat and safety. My dad saw me and dropped the line and swam the forty feet
to me and then hauled me back to the drag line which I gabbed and
held harder than anything I have ever held in my life. We worked our
way back to the boat and got out and the fear of almost being swept
off and needing to be rescued drained away and all that was let was
the euphoric buzz of a magnificent communion with nature. That
feeling of helplessness and being saved by someone strong and
competing was awesome. As soon as my dad had me I knew we were going
to be fine and that is the kind of feeling a dad should give a boy.
Life Flight
In scuba class they drill you about lots of things; air use,
buoyancy, nitrogen saturation, natural and man-made hazards. The one
thing every one seems to know about before and after and during and
if they have never been scuba diving is the bends. The bends is when
gas comes out of solution in your blood because you come up to
quickly and bubbles get stuck in your body where bubbles should not
be. It is actually fairly rare but so dangerous that you practice
preventative measures all the time to prevent it from happening. With
the constant pressure or the bends scare tactics it was always in the
corner of my mind while I was diving which is probably a good thing.
On my very first dive trip to the ocean there was a woman who was on
the trip with her husband but she was not feeling well because she
had a cold. Her husband who had paid quite a bit to take this trip
was upset that she wasn't diving. So she took some cold medicine and
got in the water which went okay for the first couple of dives. By
the second day she was feeling really rough and should not have been
diving but she got back in. My dad and I were finishing our dive and
when we surfaced we saw everyone on the boat hauling this lady out of
the water and generally panicking. We held back a little while they
loaded her up and onto a stretcher before we got out. We found out
from the others that she had been diving and she coughed up something
and it made her panic and she acceded too fast and she had the bends.
My dad had spent most of our time discussing the bends telling me
that it was not that common and that in almost 30 years he had never
seen someone get it. Then there we were on my very first trip and a
lady was in a very bad way. We were all ordered to stay at the back
of the boat while they took her to the front and started working on
her the best they could while a medivac helicopter flew over from the
navy base that had a decompression chamber about 40 miles away. They
had cut off her wetsuit and swimsuit and were trying to help her
breathe with oxygen. We were supposed to stay out of the way but I
wanted to see if she was alive. I honestly couldn't tell. At that age
I thought I wanted any opportunity to see a naked woman but it turned
out that I was wrong. Her gray skin and her convulsing made me feel
panicked and sad. I was very scared that she was going to die and I
was caught in that horrible conflict of tragedy where you want to see
what is happening and you don't want to see what is happening. When
the helicopter came we all had to go below decks to keep from being
hit by debris so we didn't get to see her picked off the deck. They
lowered a tether about fifty feet long and picked up the stretcher
and flew to the hospital with her dangling below. We were all a
little hesitant to keep diving so the captain just moved the boat for
a couple of hours until the naval base called and told him that the
lady was doing great and that she was decompressing and was going to
take a boat from there to L.A. When she was better. That good news
made us all feel much better and we stopped to dive. She got out and
met her husband at the dock when we arrived all better it seemed but
I heard later on their flight home that she had a problem and they
had to land the plane to get her help. Spooky.
Dropping My Weights
The first morning of a dive trip is always chaotic because everyone
wants to get in the water and no one knows how the program works.
There is just enough room on a boat for everyone to do their job and
there are usually some idiots who are not aware of everyone else and
they stumble around with too much gear on making life miserable for
everyone else. Luckily, the captain and the deck hand were nice but
firm and did not allow the situation to get to badly out of control.
My dad was a pro and I was efficient at getting my own gear in order
and we were one of the first to leave the dive deck out the back and
into the ocean. The day was overcast and gray and the surface was
fairly calm by ocean standards but pretty rough by my standards. The
worst part was that in my mind I was thinking about sharks and
poisonous fish and getting trapped and death and destruction that
waited just below the foreboding surface. My dad was helping one
other person get in the water while I waited and bobbed and
contemplated my immanent doom. He was swimming over to me so we could
start our dive and in a fit of self presentational excitement I
released my weight belt to make it impossible for me to dive. The
weights sank like lead, because they were lead, strait to the bottom.
My dad reached me and told me to get ready to go down and I told him
in a not fake panicked voice that my weights had fallen off. He
looked me strait in the eye and knew I was lying and he asked me
directly if I had dropped them on purpose. I maintained my innocence
and he went down to get them. He came back up in twenty minutes with
my weights which I put back on and we started our dive which turned
out not to kill me but be really amazing. We swam through kelp groves
and with some sea lions who loved to antagonize my dad. When I had to
come up I was ready to get another air tank and head right back in
but they had to be refilled and so we waited. After that I went on
every single dive for the rest of the trip and tried to forget my
cowardice and enjoy the ocean. I did.
Hitting The Ocean
After I finished my open water my dad took me out with him on a dive
trip to the ocean. We drove down to California in a van with a group
from the dive shop where my dad was an instructor. The others on the
trip were all much older then me so I just hung out with my dad when
we would stop along the way. When we got there it was late at night
and we drove up to the peer which stank horribly, which I mentioned
and my dad told me that is just what the ocean smells like. I had
been to the ocean a couple of times before and that is not what it
smelled like but I didn't argue. We got on the boat and I started
feeling wobbly instantly so my dad outfitted me with a trans-dermal
sea sickness patch that fit behind my ear. It helped but I was not to
sure about going out to sea. The captain was driving us out in what
looked like to me huge waves and a forbidding ocean but everyone else
seemed okay with it so I kept my mouth shut and sat on the back of
the boat watching Los Angeles get smaller. My dad had me come to bed
so I would be ready to dive in the morning but the problem with that
was that we had to share a bunk and my dad was a really big man and
because he got claustrophobic he made me sleep on the inside edge
between the hull and him. It was immensely dark and the waves were
slapping the side of the boat inches from my head and my hulking
snorting fidgeting father was hemming in my other side. I was
uncomfortable and terrified. After what seemed like hours I pushed
passed my dad on the pretense that I needed to pee and went and sat
on a bench on the back of the boat. The night was clear and there was
no moon and the only light were stars and the ethereal glow of the
Los Angeles megalopolis over the horizon. The hum of the boat and the
sweetly salty smell of the air was calm and reassuring and I fell
asleep on the deck bench and slept until morning. I would take a
blanket up the the rest of the nights on the boat as well and sleep
on the bench instead of between my father and the deep blue sea.
Swimming with Weights On
The first day of open water scuba certification I was paired up with
a guy in his forties that didn't want to be my partner. Our first
test was a snorkel swim out around a buoy and back which was supposed
to be easy but somehow my partner got confused and told me that we
were supposed to keep our weights on. I was in trouble immediately.
It was all I could do to keep my head above water and my partner was
no better off. I didn't understand how everyone else was cruising
the hundred yards out to the marker and back while we were only
halfway and I was just trying to stay alive. When we finally rounded
the buoy I was really tempted to drop my weights but I fought through
dipping my snorkel into the water over and over and getting that near
death adrenal rush. I was so proud that I stuck it out and made it to
the end as I stumbled up onto the bank. My dive instructor saw that I
had my weights on and asked me why the hell I was wearing my weights
and I told him my partner told me to wear them. He laughed at us and
said that he was wondering why we were taking three times longer than
the others. I felt like my life and death struggle was being
trivialized when he laughed at me and got my feel-bads hurt. Jerk.
Single Lady Scuba
In our class there were several single men in their twenties, two
couples, my sister and I, and a recently divorced woman in her early
thirties. She was pretty and nice and always wanted to help us out
and would partner with my sister or I in the pool, a job most of the
adults resisted. We always wanted to sit by her but so did all of the
young men. We were totally oblivious and didn't really realize that
all of these guys were paying her mush more attention then the other
students. They would be hanging around to help her carry her gear and
help her put it on and all sorts of really nice things that they
didn't offer to do for a 12 year old boy and his sister who probably
could have actually needed the help. On second thought that would
have been creepy if a bunch of twenty something men were really
interested in helping me get my gear on just right. When we went on
our open water trip we were staying in tents on the shore of the lake
and the evening we arrived we got settled in and had dinner and we
popped over to the cool ladies tent and for some weird reason one of
the guys from class was in her tent laying down on a sleeping bag
cuddling with her. Hmmm, very curious. We didn't let some quite
personal moment make us feel awkward so we invited ourselves into the
tent and sat down for a chat. We talked about the ride and where we
were camped and them my sister asked if the lady wanted to partner up
the next morning. She said that would be fun but her man friend was a
little curious about why he was not going to be her partner. We left
to go back to our tent and my mom asked where we had gone and when we
told her where we had been and what was going on she told us that we
shouldn't go back to that lady's tent because they probably wanted
privacy and that we shopuld stop asking her to partner with us. We
argues that she always wanted to be our partner but my mom just said
she was only being polite and that we should partner with each other
so no one had to bother with us. It didn't matter anyway because the
dive master made the pairing for each dive and that was that. Every
time a dive was over and for all three nights that dude was
monopolizing the cool lady spending a lot more tent time then I
thought was necessary. I stead of talking with a cool woman who
listened to me I had to talk to my mom and sister. Lame. Stupid lady
hogger.
Scuba Class
My mom and dad had been into Scuba diving and when I turned 12 my
sister and I took the certification class together. The class was
made up mainly of young men and forty somethings fulfilling a life
long wish. My sister and I were by far the youngest in the class
which was a bit of a novelty for the other 10 people in class. We had
to learn how to assemble our gear, swim properly, and calculate our
blood gas saturation levels. All of these tasks were not too hard for
me and I was raring to go. Every week we had a one hour theory class
followed by one hour in the local recreation center pool. The pool
time quickly went from unfettered freedom to massive boredom as the
novelty of breathing under water wore off. The only saving graces
were the right to stay up late on school nights and to make fun of
overweight underwater aerobics in the other half of the pool. We called it 'water pig ballet' because we were little jerks. They
were probably turning the corner on a sedentary lifestyle and at
least trying to get some exercise but all we saw were morbidly obese
ladies using milk jugs for resistance doing a dance routine from a
video instructor and it was very funny to my sister and I. After a
few weeks we had to take a theory test which had me really nervous
until I saw it and I was finished in ten minutes. My sister who was
not as good at math failed twice on the same night because she was
unable to calculate her nitrogen saturation and the instructors had
her practice the exact question from the test and try a third time
and she passed. After the practical we had a swimming pool test which
we were both able to pass easily and the fat ladies were not even
there to see how good we did. The last step was our open water
certification and that was going to happen at Bear Lake in couple of
weeks.
He Who Pushes the Sled Will Kill You
I liked when my scout troop was bullying other kids because then they
were distracted from bullying me. The competition portion of the
Klondike derby was focused around sleds that each troop was supposed
to build ours was a super nice aluminum and ski sled with a net deck
instead of the wooden one that most of the other sleds had. Ours was
super light and carried all of our gear without sinking into the snow
at all. We dominated the competition in racing and where you were
racing was from one station to the next competing in survival
challenges. We were a troop of kids who did stuff like that for fun
so we ate them up at that too. The problem was that we finished hours
before some of the other troops and we were left with some free time
which was not good for me being low man on the totem pole. We decided
to use our sled to sled down the hill we had previously used to try
and assassinate people. A Klondike sled has no way to steer it which
was a big problem when the sledding hill turned. It also turned out
by 'we should go sledding' really meant 'you should go sledding'. I
was all alone on the sled and three of the older boys gave me a huge
push and I was off. I was gaining a lot of speed and was coming into
a corner fast I told the boys to go ahead and slow me down now but it
turned out that after the initial push they had let it go and were
watching and laughing from the top of the hill. If I didn't make the
corner I would shoot off into the mostly frozen pond so I decided to
bail out instead. The pond was fed by a spring that kept a 10'
section of it from freezing which looked like where I was heading
even after bailing out. I was sliding down beside the sled and not
loosing speed fast enough even though I was trying to dig in any part
of my body into the snow and ice. I was really starting to panic when
I hit a rock with the middle of my back which slowed me down and spun
me around and bruising me pretty badly. The sled kept going and shot
right into the pond with only the handle and the back of the sled
sicking out. The other boys ran down, not to check on my safety but
to yell at me for letting the sled go into the pond because I guess
they didn't really know about gravity and velocity and stuff like
that. I was laying on the ground writhing in pain trying to get my
breath back while they yelled at me and told me to go get a rope to
haul out the sled with. I got myself together and hiked up the hill
and got a rope and we hauled it out. I was really sore but I was glad
that the sled wasn't hurt, we loved that sled.
How Much Did You Pay For That Zing?
That
night my 'zing was free. We had kept the fire going as long as
possible and I had an idea to help out with the water and put the
cooler near the fire which I forgot about and melted the nozzle off
of and poured all of the water out on the ground. Which is not how I
wanted that to end up. The guy who was spending his weekend freezing
in the cold with some hell raising boys got his cooler melted in the
bargin and was not overly pleased with it and told me so until it
looked like I was about to cry and he let me off. When the fire had
died we all went to bed where I was soon convinced I was going to
die. If you are not familiar with camping gear it is all based on
lies. A six man tent would sleep three maybe four very friendly and
not too big guys. A sleeping bag rated for 0 degrees will keep you
warm down to about 40 but no colder. Mine was rated at zero and it
was only 10 degrees outside so I thought I was well in the black.
Nope. It was the coldest most miserable night in my entire life. At
my mothers direction I had packed all sorts of wacky contingency
items and no extra protection from the cold. I was shivering and had
curled into a ball at the bottom of my basically useless bag and
tried to wait for morning. It would not hurry up at all and the night
poked along lazily toward the dawn at the slowest speed imaginable.
About five I figured if I was going to die I should die trying to
live and I went out and spent thirty minutes trying to start the
fire. One of the long suffering leaders who was in a tent with a
stove heard me farting around and came out to see what I was up to. I
told him I was way too cold and I needed a fire, he took pity on me
and let me lay on the floor of their tent that was, frankly, a little
too warm. I went right to sleep and didn't wake up until breakfast
was on. I decided that night that I was not an outdoorsy person and
that nature was not a friend to be fraternized with but an enemy to
be subdued by the power of bio-fuel combustion.
Apples and Trees
Before
I get into defending our camp from the now-onto-us angry mob I need
to remind you of my crazy friend Justin who was quite violent. Well,
he was on the trip with us as was his equally violent older brother
and pater familias of the whole crazy
clan was in his stove warmed wall tent having a nice relaxing evening
when we came running back in to camp in a panic. We were about to get
a little mob justice and the mob was not far behind us. They
surrounded our camp and started throwing snow balls and yelling
threats but they made the mistake of hitting Justin's dad's tent. He
shot out in a rage demanding to know exactly what in the blue hell
was going on. Someone from the crowd yelled that they were there to
exact revenge for our assaults. He told them they would not be doing
any such thing and to piss right off. They emboldened by their
numbers and the darkness said he should shut up. Then like an idiot
someone threw a snow ball and hit him right in the mouth. Well, they
thought that they were dealing with a normal rational human being
that might have retreated or fought back in kind. They had no idea
that this was a old mountain man who would much rather pick up a
shovel and chase after the kids and try to bash them. So he did. He
smacked a couple of kids before the crowd new what was happening and
he started picking up other kids and chucking them down the hill and
into trees. I guess it was his way of letting them know that we would
not be negotiating with terrorist and our camp would not be getting
trashed like those ersatz bandits from the framed up troop up the
hill. He grabbed one kid by the neck and when the kid punched him in
self defense it drove him mad with rage and he punched and kicked the
kid a few times. Everyone cleared out and didn't come back and we
were settling down around the fire when a ranger and police officer
and some of the adults from other camps came to have a chat about why
there were so many battered boys claiming that we had something to do
with it. Justin's dad told them that they had come to our camp
threatening to do us bodily harm and he acted in self preservation.
Well, that was kind of true. The officer said that they would not be
pressing charges but that we had to stay in camp and if he had to
come up the canyon a gain someone was going to jail. Fair enough I
say. We stuck with campfire ribaldry for the remainder of the
evening.
Klondike Mayhem
There
was a winter camp and survival skills competition every year for the
boy scouts in our area called the Klondike derby. The fist time I was
allowed to go was when I was twelve and I made the mistake of letting
my mom help me pack. I didn't know at the time that there are several
schools of camping and she is from the take-it-all and I am an
adherent of the I-probably-don't-need-that. She had me take extra
everything and two of others and plenty of all the benefit of course
was that I had everything I needed, the draw back was that I had some
I didn't. The camp was at the top of a rather steep and icy hill and
taking all of my gear up started to get a little ridiculous. All of
the other boys and some of the leaders took the opportunity of my
Sherpa induction to make a little fun. When we got our camp
established I joined in with the other psychopaths that made up my
troop in raising a little hell. The hill that we had hiked up to camp
became a sledding hill and we were a little way down it so we decided
to try and knock all of the other sledders off of their sleds. We got
a long section of rope and went down to on of the narrower parts of
the sledding path to tie the rope to a tree on one side and three of
the bigger boys held it neck high to a sledder. We didn't have to
wait long for our first customer who was ripped right off his sled
flat on his back. The most beautiful part of all was his sled kept
going to the bottom three hundred yards down and away. It was awesome
and funny and they just kept coming down the hill and swack, smack,
splat. We even added a little strategic misdirection to the attack my
yelling that we were from another troop whose number we had overheard
down at the opening meeting. We were told on and yelled at and
chased but we escaped. When we had gone the long way around to the
camp we saw a fairly angry mom gathering up the hill a little bit and
went to join in. They were all mad about having been cloths-lined off
of their sleds and wanted some revenge against the troop whose number
we had been framing up for the crime. We stormed up to the camp and
started trowing snowballs in and then rushed the putting out their
fire and dismantling their tents. That taught them a lesson about
cloths-lining sledders. When this little party was broken up someone
who knew someone from our troop told everyone that it was Santaquin
899 that was the ones not these wrongfully acussed and well trashed
victims. We ran back to our camp fearing the same fate for us if we
didn't start the defense.
Under House Cat Rescue
We lived in an immobilized and added onto mobile home while we were
growing up. A roof and skirting were added over the years but until
then there were a few problems unique to (im)mobile home life. One
was that the roof had to be re-tarred twice a year to seal the joints
in the metal. The second was that cats loved to get into hole in the
insulation under the house and have their babies. The problem with
kittens in the insulation was that they made a ton of noise and it
was hard to sleep with mewling going on all night. One batch of
kittens were particularly load and the whole family was up so my dad
told me to get a flashlight and crawl under the house and get them
out. It was about 10 at night but I was excited, when I was young and
my dad asked me to do a job I thought was more grown up and
responsible I felt deputized and empowered. I got on a long sleeve
shirt and got a knife to cut the thick plastic backing from the
insulation. I crawled under using my cat guided radar and cut the
hole they had climbed into wider with the knife and started pulling
out kittens. When I got them out I had them all in a bucket and I
realized that they had all been blinded by the insulation and it made
me really sad. My mom took the bucket of kittens to the animal
shelter where I assume they were euthanized. For my part I felt
pretty dang tough and empowered by my rescue efforts and I had a
little bit of swagger in my voice when I retold my experience of
daring do. I was not aware that in my hillbilly town that saving cats
was less impressive to those idiots then killing them and every time
I told one of my contemporaries they would tell me how they would
have just killed them. There were lots of boys while I was growing up
that would brag about torturing and killing cats which somehow got
them respect from our peers and it made me sick but I never said
anything because I didn't want to be uncool. It was a relief to me to
go on to Jr. High when this kind of animal abuse was finally
considered taboo.
Baby Fight Club
There
was a large gap in age between the four oldest kids in my family and
the two youngest. I
was eight when my youngest sister was born and ten when my youngest
brother was. What that meant was that we were not friends so much as
babysitters for those to until they were adults. On occasion while we
were supposed to be babysitting the two babies as we would call them
my brother and I would encourage them to wrestle and see who would
win. It sounds brutal but it was just good clean fun for everyone and
the bouts ended in pins or if one of the micro combatants started
crying or didn't want to play anymore. We would be set up as their
corner men and coach them for battle and then just let them go at
each other until we were bored or someone got really hurt. I still
remember with fondness the reckless abandon of my little sister, who
has never been too tall and was much shorter then, as she would
charge into battle with a little toddler war cry. It just goes to
show that the old adage that everything is adorable when it is done
by little children. From the fists of babes.
How To Be Cool and Going Out and Stuff
My older sister knew everything about being cool and what being cool
meant. She knew what it meant to be going out with some one. One of
the requirements, perhaps ironically, was not to have actually gone
out with them in the sense that you went and did something together
as a couple. She did however have a quite extensive hand written
list of other rules and restrictions of what a couple and each
individual in the couple could or could not do to remain a couple.
It was awesome. I read the list but I was not sure what it meant it
was like some beautiful foreign language that only the initiates of
Junior High could decipher. I didn't have a girl friend but I wanted
to make sure that if I did have one that I knew what was the
protocols and jargon so I didn't look like a fool. My sister gave me
a long point by point run down with examples of real life, actually
hypothetical real life, situations in which each rule could be
interpreted. I loved it for two reasons: one, my sister was paying
attention to me in a positive way and two, I was learning the secrets
of what cool people knew and it was awesome. After she had to leave
to go and hang out with her friends I was a little elated at having
been brought into the theoretical circle of knowledge. I went and
laid down on my parents bed and looked up at the ceiling and ran
though imaginary situations of going out and being cool. I even
devised a plan to be cool in the proximal future and to get a
girlfriend with whom I would perform every obligation and nuance of
coupleship with out error. This is why you should never embrace
theory in a vacuum because you can forget critical practical
implications of your real life as it pertains to your new fantasy.
The main problems were that I was still a massive nerd and I was
still desperately uncool and planning out a strategy to be cool was
not what cool people did. For that afternoon I could dream and get a
little euphoric at the implications of my new found popularity and
that was a good feeling while it lasted.
I Get Tricked Again – Tape
I wanted so badly to be cool. I wanted to be one of those kids at
school that everyone knew was cool and popular. My sister was pretty
cool and she was always doing cool things so I think that is the
reason I put up with her abuse, because I wanted to be included in
her inner circle. She did not want me in her inner circle unless it
was for some entertainment. One night some of her girlfriends and her
decided that it would be funny to wrap my head up in duct tape. There
is a steep drop-off in the perception of humor in the ol' wrap your
head in duct tape joke depending on if you are the taper or the
tapee. The four girls chased me and held me down while my sister
wrapped my head up in duct tape until there was only holes for tears
and snot to come out off. You know what is worse than having your
head wrapped in duct tape? Answer: having your head unwrapped from
duct tape. When I had gained some composure I tried to unwrap myself
but found I was quite in capable of inflicting that amount of pain on
myself. My sister offered to help but I told her there was no way in
cussing swear cuss I would ever let her 'help' me. I was able to slip
some scissors under the edges and cut the mainly monolithic wrapping
into painful little strips which I was able to rip off before my self
preservational instincts kicked in and made me stop to recoup. When I
was done my head was stinging and raw with lots of missing hair and
lots of glue from the tape that looked a little like boogers and
would not wash out of my hair. I had my sister cut my hair down
passed the damage and I was really sad about being abuse but as her
penitence my sister let me hang out with her and her cute friends the
rest of the night which made up for it a little.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)