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.
