Why scuba?

Why scuba?

Now that I’m back in the West I feel like I need to go somewhere new and exotic. I recruit Nancy, who’s always up for adventure and who desperately wants to escape the freakish winter we’re having. After much discussion on location—everywhere from Istanbul [my idea] to Scotland or “anything tropical” [her idea], we settle on Cozumel, Mexico, and Nancy orders us up a condo for a week in March.

I start doing some reading and find out that Cozumel is about being in the water and looking at the purty critters, and Nancy’s all set to snorkel. I then find out that it’s the 2nd best place in the world to go scuba diving.

Scuba diving? Not on my life list. Not on my radar. Never really thought about it. Maybe I’ll give that a try, I think.

Then I think about the fact that I’d be dependent on a tank for air and that you can’t just lift up your face and tread water if something’s wrong. Then people remind that some critters in the water eat other critters. I’m not interested in hanging out in a shark cage. The cage, frankly, scares me more than anything. And didn’t the crocodile hunter get killed by a sting ray? Hmmmm…

So then my lovely department chair (she really is lovely) hears I’m going to Cozumel and says I really must dive… Why else would I go?

Nancy’s not up for it—she’s worried about her lungs. I have no such excuse, but the hypochondriac in me thinks about an ear infection I had 20 years ago and wonders if it will affect me now. And I read that in rare cases air in an old tooth filling can compress and expand when you dive and wreak havoc on your mouth. I’m sure it will happen to me.

Then I hear about how expensive this hobby can be.

Then I picture some fly-by-night dive shop winking and assuring me I’m safe and letting me drown below as they go through my pockets on the surface for credit cards. I wonder if Anderson Cooper would do a story on me, but figure I’m not young and blonde enough for the poor-missing-tourist press.

Then I find out that my very own little college offers a scuba course on the block which would end the day before I leave for Mexico. Suddenly the risks aren’t so risky. As faculty I can take the class for free. They start you out in the shallow end of a pool, so if I freak out I can just stand up. I talk to the instructor, a very Zen guy who’s been teaching the class for years, works in the medical profession when he’s not doing scuba, and HAPPENS to be going to Cozumel THE SAME TIME I WILL BE THERE.

That settles it. Scuba Suz is born.