DA DUM-- DA DUM--DA DUM

Such a sweet smile

I used to love to scuba dive. Loved it enough that I decided to seek an occupation that would support my love it. Thus at 35, I went back to school with all intention of becoming a marine biologist.

I became a certified diver and went every chance I could. Before anyone with a boat could finish the sentence, "Would you want to-------?" I had on my mask and weight belt.
The weight belt is one of the reasons for this post. Roy Scheider, is the other.

When I took the scuba course for certification, it was October in Florida at a local country club pool. Not usually a frigid time of year but cool enough that swimming in an unheated pool at night was brutal. Often, I would be excused from the water exercises because I would become cyanotic (lips turned blue).

An embarrassing thing also happened besides blue lips. I have always been unusually buoyant. There was an exercise where you go to the bottom of the pool, take off all your gear leaving it on the bottom and rise to the surface. You were then supposed to dive to the bottom of the pool and put all the gear back on. One of the first things you put on was the weight belt which should help you to stay on the bottom to re gear. I was so buoyant that I could not stay down long enough to do the deed. I would scrap and pull down but invariably, my feet would break the surface like I was doing water ballet and I wouldn't be half geared up.

My super buoyancy got me another excused absence from an exercise. Up until then, my bouncing in the water like an inflatable raft had been fun and pretty much removed any fear of drowning. However for scuba diving, it was a real handicap. On my ocean dive for certification, I was given a big rock to carry around in addition to my weight belt. Why couldn't I be like every one else? Well I asked and was I sorry I did.

I asked my instructor why I floated so well and he gave me that same trapped look men get when you ask,"Does this make my butt - - - - - ?" It seems buoyant people have a high fat to muscle ratio. Even though I was athletic and appeared fit, there were lots of fat cells lurking in my body. Uncool thing to learn about your self. I eventually compensated by putting so much weight on my belt that it was hard to walk out of water.

So into the blue depths I happily went. I quit my job of ten years and enrolled in school to see if I couldn't make diving part of my living as a marine biologist. In my sophomore year, Roy Scheider came into my life. I know Jaws was a mechanical being, I know my chances were greater for a lightning strike, and no I never did see a shark while diving. Still ,Jaws scared me right out of the water. It was the scene where the woman is swimming by her self at night. Duh, I had also done that many times at beach parties and thought it was so cool. She feels a hard bump, reaches down and can't find her leg. Still gives me goose bumps. Told you I was a wuss.

Since my diving days were over, so were my college days. I do regret the irrational fear but don't regret going back to school. Wish I had finished but my incentive was gone and I became a drop out taking up "playing" full time. By then I was pretty burned out working full time, going to school full time and playing only a wee bit.

Did something innocuous as a movie or an irrational fear ever make you change a life direction?