SCUBA Diving: Kaimey’s Story

Hey, guys! It’s Kaimey here today. Scott shared his first SCUBA diving experience last week so I thought I’d give you my experience after he talked me into getting certified too.

At some point before our wedding in 2005, we decided to honeymoon in Jamaica. Scott thought it would be fun to SCUBA dive there and talked me into doing the certification course before we went. I must have really loved him to take a 2-weekend class just 6 weeks before I walked down the aisle!

And he loved me too because he retook the course so I wouldn’t have to do it by myself. He also probably knew I would have never done it on my own. So we signed up to spend 2 weekends devoted to getting me SCUBA certified.

The first weekend was all class work in a book at a desk. I rocked it. The second weekend was split between practicing with the equipment in an indoor heated swimming pool (fun and preferable) and the open water dive test in Lake Travis. In March. In the cold. In the cloudy, green water. We wore fashionable wetsuits, but it was still miserably cold.

Modeling our wetsuits before diving in.

In order to receive certification we had to successfully perform several underwater tasks, which Scott mentioned last week as well. Take out the regulator and put it back in, share air with our buddy, clear water from our masks, remove/replace the mask, etc.

About 25 feet under water was a platform that our class dove to do the assessments. We formed a semi-circle facing the instructor and he would point to each of us and indicate the task to show him. Then we would each perform it down the line while the others watched and shivered in the water.

We were tested on a few simple tasks that went well. The instructor started a new round, pointing to Scott and signing for him to remove his mask and put it back on. Scott executed flawlessly. Next, the instructor pointed to me and signed the same.

I tilted my mask to break the seal on my face and pulled the mask off. I didn’t anticipate the rush of cold water flooding my skin that had been protected from the mask. My instinct was to suck in a gasp of air, and with that I must have loosened my lips because I also sucked in water. Further, because I was wearing contacts, I couldn’t open my eyes with my mask off. So now I’m choking dying, and I can’t open my eyes. It’s silent, it’s cold, it’s dark and I am in full-on panic mode.

I had learned that any problem can be solved underwater. Coughing, losing air, puking (ummm…disgusting, and just go ahead and drown me if I’m in that situation), something in your eye…whatever the issue, you can fix it underwater. I should have exhaled in the regulator to clear any water and then inhaled to begin breathing normally again. Then I could have continued with replacing my mask and opened my eyes. And all would have been fine in the underwater world.

Instead, I held my breath, afraid to inhale, and did the hand signal for finishing the dive and returning to surface. With personal plans to high-tail it there as fast as I could. And that’s what I did: bail out. Shot right to the surface.

I arrived at the top grateful to be sucking in the good oxygen God intended us to breathe. The instructor and Scott soon met me there. After recovering, being comforted and encouraged by Scott, and briefly lectured on never doing that again by the instructor, I agreed to go back down and try again.

We dove back to the platform and got re-situated. The instructor pointed at me again and signaled for me to remove and replace my mask.

And I just shook my head “no.” Nope. Changed my mind. No plans to actually ever do that again. He signaled again, and again I just say “no.” He later told me he had never experienced anyone just tell him “no” when he signaled for them to perform a task. And he wasn’t sure how to handle it. For some reason I’m weirdly proud of that. So what next? Everyone was just floating there silently and cold, waiting on me to do what I’ve been told. And someone needed to make a move.

The instructor finally just moved to the next person and had them do the task, and then the next, then the next, until he was out of people. He pointed back to me. Fine. I was out of options to stall and if I didn’t do it, this whole thing had been for waste.

So I gave myself a pep talk about how every other person did it and didn’t die. And I hesitatingly reached for my mask, barely removed it from my head (I actually think part of it may have still been strapped to my head) and replaced it, cleared it and breathed a sigh of relief, all in about 7 seconds. For comparison, I think Scott removed his, swung it around his finger a few times, did some between the legs basketball moves with it, and did a back flip before replacing it.

But mine was enough to give me the check mark as completed, and that’s all that matters. Somehow I was able to complete all the tasks and receive my certification. We’ve done a few dives together and I’ve enjoyed it for the most part (other than the perpetual feeling that each breath could be my very last). It’s beautiful down there and there’s so much LIFE to experience. I have not ever messed with my mask one time while on an actual dive.

Sometimes in life there is something in front of us we know we must do. There’s no way around it. Only through it. Specifically in the financial world it’s true too. We know we need to cut back on spending or sell the fancy car to pay off some debt or save more for retirement.

We may not want to do it because of fear or discomfort or hassle. But we know it’s the right thing. Facing it can be difficult, but pushing through can open up a whole new world of benefits we would have never gotten to experience if we bailed out and gave up.

I’m so glad Scott encouraged me to just do the dumb mask test so we could share new experiences together. He’s so great at motivating people through the hard decisions so they can live with the most reward. Let him know if you have a difficult financial situation to face so he can help you get through it too!

We’ll take next week off from the blog for Spring Break!