Scuba Newb hits a wall

originally published July 3, 2017

Saturday had been great! I had a renewed sense of confidence in my ability to breeze through the rest of my training.  On Sunday, I hit the pool for some more practice, even trying the “manually inflate your BCD underwater” skill, which seemed all kinds of awkward but wasn’t that hard. I watched loads of YouTube videos on scuba training. I’m a kinesthetic learner: I need to actively do a thing in order to fully comprehend a thing. Watching the videos at least gave me an idea of what I was in for.

I. Was. Ready.

Monday afternoon I would be meeting with a different instructor from the shop, who I’ll call Will. Chris was booked into another class but Will had an Advanced Class in the morning and could meet with me in the afternoon. Destination: Lake Denton, which is tucked away far from any Florida city you’ve probably ever heard of, about 90 minutes southwest of Orlando. It’s another diving hotspot for those who don’t live on the coast, though, with decent visibility and a quiet environment.

I had met Will before, he did my in-class final testing, and I was completely confident in him but wondered if his teaching style would differ from Chris’. The short answer? Yeah. Ohhhh yeah.

Geared up and in the water, Will wants to put me through my paces to see for himself where we’re at, so we dip down to our knees, do some regulator recovery, then he signals for me to fully flood and clear my mask. No problem, right? Wrong. As soon as he sees me holding my nose, he waves me off and gives the thumbs up, meaning go back up to the surface.

“What are you doing?”
“I know, I know this is something that I’ll have to get over but, right now, I can’t flood my mask without holding my nose.”
“Well, you need to be able to do it without holding your nose.”

Uh… excuse me?

What followed was an hour-long, anxiety-ridden nightmare that had me this close… thiiiiiiiiiis close… to just saying “fuck this, fuck you, fuck everything, I’m done!” Will explained, firmly but patiently, that this was an important skill. If your mask comes off in the water - and it can happen: a sudden blast of an unexpected current, an accidental fin kick from a dive buddy, any number of things - you have to be able to handle it without panicking, and without shooting like a bottle rocket to the surface (which, let’s face it, can kill you under the right circumstances).

We worked, and we worked, and we worked. Will talked, encouraged, tried to make me laugh by playing underwater rock/paper/scissors. He pushed, I pushed back. He stood his ground, I cried. Yes, I’ll admit it. I stood there, neck deep in that warm, sun drenched lake, refusing to make eye contact with Will, as fat, hot tears silently spilled down my face. If I kept that up, I’d flood the mask without even being underwater.

Anecdote break! Let me tell you a little story. It was 1982 (that year again, the year my mom turned 50) and my high school marching band was having a walkathon fundraiser. Remember those? People would pledge to pay you a certain amount of money for every mile you walked. Ours was a typical 20 miles. Our group set out from our high school campus early on a Saturday morning, eager and brisk paced.

At about the halfway mark, we stopped for lunch. Let me tell you, for the record, if you don’t walk a lot (I’m not one of those marathon people who have 5K/10K/20K stickers all over the back windshield), don’t sit down after going 10 miles and then expect to be able to walk again. Once we were back on the trail again, I found myself going slower and slower. Everything hurt. My friends were trying to get me to keep up, but I couldn’t do it. I fell further and further behind.

As luck would have it, the planned route took us right past my Aunt’s house (small towns, yo). I saw her house and I was like, “That’s it, I’m done.” I told the chaperones I was tapping out and knocked on my Aunt’s front door. She sympathized, gave me a cold drink and told me to relax. She didn’t drive herself, so I called my cousin (the firefighter/rescue diver who lived with Dad and me mentioned in “Why am I Doing This”), and he drove over to pick me up.

But, in the car, something came over me. What was I doing? Giving up? Is that the kind of person I wanted to be? No, I decided. I did not want this to be a defining moment of my life. I did not want to be the only kid who didn’t finish. So, I had him stop the car and told him I was walking the rest of the way.

And I did. He followed me in the car but I walked all the way back to the school. I even had to pass my own house to do it but, I did it. The moral of the story: Scuba Newb don’t quit!

Meanwhile, back in Lake Denton, Will is trying his best to keep me motivated. We go down under the water. I breathe, slow in and slow out. I repeat in my head over and over: my nose is irrelevant, my nose is irrelevant. I slip my finger into the skirt of my mask, breaking the seal and letting the water trickle in. My nose is irrelevant, my nose is irrelevant. And there. I’ve done it. I sit there with my water filled mask on my face for a couple of minutes, just absorbing the sensation. Will waits patiently. The man is a saint. Then, with a blast of air from my (irrelevant) nose, I clear the water out.

Tada! Fist bumps all around! Of course… we’re not done yet. Now Will wants me to do it again, and to remove the mask completely. He is so not my favorite person in that moment. But I’ve unlocked some secret inside myself, I’m getting out of my own way. Actually, for me, what works is opening my mouth really wide and breathing calmly and deeply. This way, I can shut off my nose. So I flood my mask again… and take it off completely. And I’m okay. After the requisite amount of time Will gives me a tap to let me know I can put it back on. Mask on, mask cleared, I’m all good.

Will then gives me the hand signal meaning “do it again.” I’m sure you can visualize what hand signal I gave him.

Nevertheless, I did it again and we surfaced. “See? All that time you were saying ‘I can’t’ was just nonsense,” Will said with a grin. I know he’s right, about that, about all the reasons why he had to torture me. I’d made it past that obstacle and had little to fear now. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly and, guess what? I made it all the way through Open 1! I did an actual scuba dive! Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.