"Water for Elephants," a Chick Flick, but I liked it too.

I just about passed up going to see this movie. With my 30 year old daughter and a couple of her girlfriends on Facebook gushing about how they HAD to see it, and when I saw that the brooding vampire guy from the Twilight series was the romantic lead, I figured it would just be another romantically overdone chick flick.

But finally we went ahead and bought tickets for it. I mean I needed SOMETHING to watch while I ate my popcorn, so we settled on “Water for Elephants.” Basically, we chose it through a process of elimination. One of the other three at the local quad was a Filipino flick—sorry, not much on those. And then there was “Thor,” an okay show that I’d already seen a few days before. And the third, “Fast & Furious Five” has no appeal to me at all—narcissistic jerks in flashy cars, thrashing and crashing to urban thug music—no thanks.

In hindsight, I never should have resisted going to see “Water for Elephants.” I enjoyed it from the opening scenes, which harkens back to the way Titanic opens, another popular period piece from 1997. Both “Water” and “Titanic” have centenarians tell their stories many decades after the events portrayed in their respective movies, recalling the times when the old tellers were still young, dumb and wrinkle free.

Titanic uses this device with 100 year old Rose Dawson telling her story as the camera fades back to April 1912, when she as a teenage Rose begins her sea journey aboard the doomed ship. “Water” starts similarly with Hal Holbrook playing a crabby old fellow named Jacob Jankowski, also almost 100 years young, telling his story to a modern day circus boss.

Holbrook, basically in a cameo role, starts off as a seemingly cantankerous curmudgeon before rousing the curiosity of the circus manager. This “Big Top” fellow, who up until then only cares about returning the old man to his nursing home, can’t help himself when he learns that Jankowski actually witnessed the legendary 1931 Benzini Brothers circus tragedy (fictional of course). The manager opens a file drawer and pulls out an ancient picture of a beautiful blonde woman atop an elephant, circa 1931, and hands it to Jacob who seems stunned by it. Jacob’s eye glaze as he gazes at the photo of his late wife as she looked when he first met her all those years ago.

It’s dark and stormy out. Holbrook as Jankowski is deeply affected by the old photo. He asks the circus boss if he has anything to drink. The circus manager breaks out a bottle as the two of them sit down. Jankowski begins telling a tale of how he ended up working for the ill-fated Benzini Brother’s circus, back when he was a homeless young man during the Great Depression. The voice of Hal Holbrook playing a centenarian in modern times starts out cracked and shaky. In midsentence, the aged narrator changes seamlessly to 23 year old Robert Pattinson. As the narrator’s voice becomes young and virile the viewers find themselves in 1931.

So that’s how the film starts and where my account of the plotline ends. It’s not my purpose here to recount the entire story start to end; you can read that on Wikipedia if you want. After watching “Water” however, I am compelled to develop some of the thoughts that occurred to me during the movie.

On that note, lately, I haven’t much remarked on films. For a while there I reviewed just about every one I viewed. Now, it takes an exceptional flick to inspire me enough to write about it. In this case I feel that inspiration, mostly because of the intriguing historical and social aspects presented in the film as follows:

• The era of The Great Depression: The film mostly takes place in 1931, two years into the Great Depression. The extreme hardships of those times play an important role in the film. Men are desperate to work and August, the German American owner of the circus, takes advantage of their misery by shorting their pay or by not paying them at all. There are times even, when his goons simply throw workers off the fast moving train, often to their death, to avoid paying them. In the movie this brutal practice is referred to as being “red-lighted.”

• German August vs. Polish Jacob: Eight years from 1931, Nazi Germany will invade and cruelly crush the people of Poland. I see it as no coincidence then that the classic conflict in this movie between the evil and the virtuous reflects the coming international conflict, when a malicious Nazi Germany attacks and subjugates an innocent Poland, an event that marks the start of WWII. In effect then, this film presents a microcosm of how Nazi Germany enslaves the rest of Europe, with Rosie the Elephant, representing the allies (USA, USSR), coming to Europe’s rescue and bashing the murderous Nazis into submission. Unlike the events of WWII however, where Germany had its way with Poland, in “Water” Jacob the Pole provides a much more satisfying ending when he becomes responsible for the end of the German’s reign of terror. This happens when a prostrate Jacob, himself just about to be killed by one of August’s henchmen, commands Rosie the elephant with his last breath to bludgeon the German with a spike as the crazed Kraut, using a bull pike, chokes the life out of his wife, Marlena, Jacob’s future wife as it turns out. As soon as I saw the actor who plays August, Christoph Waltz, I recognized him as the Nazi SS officer from “Glorious Basterds,” so it was no stretch to see him as the symbol of a nasty Nazi, especially with his slightly German accented English.


• Prohibition: In 1931 the Prohibition Era still has two years left to go. This period in American history plays prominently in “Water for Elephants.” In almost every scene the circus workers are seen defying the law as they drink alcohol. In one scene August, Marlena and Jacob are drinking in a “speak easy saloon” when the cops raid the place. Marlena and Jacob escape together and get separated from August; this is when they steal their first adulterous kiss with each other.


• Adultery: The moviemakers seek to justify this wrongdoing by showing the extent of August’s horrible treatment of his wife, Marlena. Through much of the movie, Marlena attempts to resist her attraction to Jacob, but August’s viciousness worsens to the point that he actually pushes Marlena into Jacob’s arms. Jacob also struggles to do right, but his love for Marlena drives him to want to protect her from August whenever the circus owner goes into one of his out of control rages.


• Jamaican Ginger Extract: Also due to the ban against drinking alcohol at the time, one of Jacob’s circus buddies, an old man named Camel, who had come to Jacob’s aid when the young man first jumped the train, has the dangerous habit of drinking Jamaican Ginger Extract (also known as “Jake” back in the day). After years of indulging in this unhealthy so-called “patent medicine,” Camel develops a form of paralysis, as the extract actually contains a neurotoxin called Tricresyl phosphate. Camel’s sickness prevents him from any work, a kiss of death for anyone working for The Benzini Brothers Circus. Jacob tries to save Camel from being “red lighted,” but once August finds out about the bedridden Camel he has the stricken man tossed from the speeding train. Ultimately this sadistic act results in the end of August and The Benzini Brothers Circus.


• The string of “necessary” human foibles (as a cinematic device): The wanton murder of their paralyzed addicted circus buddy is more than several of the long oppressed workers can stomach. They exact their vengeance on August and his goons by releasing caged circus animals into the crowds at the height of a performance. It is during the ensuing mayhem, while the desperate circus goers seek to escape being mauled by the big cats, that the decisive act of the movie takes place. Innocent people are trampled, mauled and killed, this is when the disgruntled men murder August’s hated enforcers. So, one could say that without the desperation of The Great Depression, without Prohibition and the lawlessness it spawned, without Camel’s addiction to the toxic “Jake,” without August’s abject inhumanity, and without the forbidden love between Jacob and Marlena, the entire amazing story could not happen. Using a bit of alliteration, I guess you could say that human foibles, failings and folly make for fully fantastic fables! (Yes, I came up with that.)

One of the reasons I so thoroughly enjoyed this movie is that by the end of it, virtually every loose end is taken care of. Every bad guy is dead at the hands of the good guys and not so good guys (subjecting innocent circus goers to danger and death? That is NOT good). The REALLY good guy ends up with the good gal after rescuing her, along with a very good elephant. All in all we get to see one of those “and they all lived happily ever after” endings. I LIKE that.

But not every one likes it as much as I do. In doing some post cinematic viewing research, I see that a lot of professional critics, unlike the amateur reviewer that I am, fault the onscreen relationship between Jacob and Marlena. This is decidedly unjust criticism. Evidently, what these “critics” are all clamoring for is something more passionate between the two romantic lead characters; they claim that “chemistry” is lacking between Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. I say bunk to that. When I watched them together I appreciated that the director was trying to capture what it feels like to be in a forbidden adulterous relationship. What these numbskull critics are doing, if you ask me, is projecting modern values on a time when doing such a thing would have made the participants extremely uncomfortable. THAT 1930’s discomfort and angst is what I believe was well captured by Pattinson and Witherspoon. Once again, being the contrarian that I am, the thing hated MOST by the professional reviewers is what I liked THE most. Besides, when you look at Pattinson’s so-called onscreen “chemistry” with Kristen Stewart in the Twilight series, it is not a whole lot different. And truthfully, I’m still a bit mystified by exactly what they are referring to when these supposed experts refer to “chemistry.”

At the end of “Water for Elephants,” despite my determination not to, I misted up. It starts in the last few minutes of wrap-up when, back in modern times, we learn that Jacob, Marlena and Rosie have led a long and fruitful life together resulting in a slew of children, and that the two original “girls,” Marlena and Rosie, have both long since passed on, leaving Jacob behind.

What put me over the edge, taking me from tight-throat swallowing to full-blown teary blinking, is when Jacob asks the circus boss for a job. The manager pauses for a second to consider it and then warmly responds, “Sure, why not? You’ll be one for the record books—the oldest person ever to run away with the circus!”

Old Jacob merrily responds, “No! I’m not running AWAY. I’m coming HOME!”

At that, I lost it. “Sniffle, snuffle, choke. Dang it, I got something in my eye.”

I’d held it together pretty well until that doggone Hal Holbrook as old Jacob utters that final line. Brilliant!

Complete baso-cervical fracture, left femur... Gulp!

There are at least five or six more posts in store about my last diving adventure, but that all kind of went on hold when my mother-in-law broke her leg a few days ago. I was informed about this with the typical, “Oh no, she fell and broke her hip!”

After making the obligatory response, I think I said something like, “Oh, the poor thing! Where is she now? What did the doctor say?”

But my next response was not nearly so sympathetic, which if you know me is typical of me. I became downright accusatory, perhaps over harshly so, which is even MORE typical of me. For some reason I felt like trying to assign some blame as far as to the cause of this unfortunate event. My finger pointing may have been accurate, but admittedly, it was STILL out of line.

I'm ashamed to say that I said rather caustically, “You know, your mom has smoked for a LONG time, and with her being in her late 70s now, she was practically ASKING for osteoporosis. And by the way, I can guarantee you that she did NOT fall and break her hip. It was the other way around; she broke her hip and fell. People ALWAYS say that because they can’t imagine that someone could snap a leg or fracture a hip merely from standing on it, but you know what? Once the osteoporosis sets in and the bone mass disappears it’s ONLY a matter of time—bones WILL break! Man, I wish all these dummies I see smoking while they’re still young could SEE what’s in store for them, to SEE the damage they are subjecting themselves to after years of sucking in that nasty stuff. And osteoporosis is the least of what they do to themselves usually. ….And to think usually all these horrible conditions befall these smokers when they are too old to pay for the hospital treatment and to take care of themselves, just like your mom.”

Yes, I DO go on. I say these mean things and always feel bad after I say them, but knowing this almost never stops me. I tell myself that I should either find a more sensitive way to expound, but I rarely do. I’m an evil out of control know-it-all. I MUST be stopped.

My wife brought home the x-rays and report. The findings fully explained what actually happened to her mom:

Pelvis—anteroposterior lateral
Complete baso-cervical fracture, left femur, with marked disalignment of fragments
Soft tissue swelling is discernible
Visualized pelvic bones and right proximal femur appear intact
Lumbosacral spine-lateral
No demonstrable compression fracture, visualized lumbar vertebral bodies
Incidental finding of senile osteoporosis

(The xray photo above depicts a similar broken femur)

Another reason I shouldn’t be so hard on my wife’s mom is that she went through life not really understanding how much damage her smoking was doing to her body over the decades. To be even fairer, not even Americans, who should have no excuse for NOT knowing about the dangers of puffing away on cigs, would have known how smoking can lead to weak bones, since science didn’t make the connection until only about 20 years ago.

I tried to guess as to how smoking would lead to low density bone mass. Knowing that smoking causes restricted blood vessels, I conjectured that bad circulation would lead to malnourished bones. After all, bones grow from the inside out by way of the marrow which IS fed through the blood supply. It turns out I was close but no cigar.

From what I read on the internet, there are actually two reasons why an older woman would be more likely to develop osteoporosis from smoking:

The first reason applies to all genders—smoking leads to joint and connective tissue pain from degenerative joint disease so that mobility is lessened. It follows that a person then becomes less active which leads to low bone density. So, when it comes to bones, it’s true what they say, “use ‘em or lose ‘em.”

The second reason applies ONLY to older women—smoking not only causes a woman to go into menopause on average five years earlier than she otherwise would, but being post-menopausal itself tends to lead to osteoporosis due to low estrogen levels. Combined with smoking, the effects of menopause are a double whammy, because smoking reduces estrogen even more—low estrogen means low bone density. So there you go.

Anyway, she finally had the operation this morning—poor thing. It took some doing to talk her into it though, primarily because she felt guilty about the costs of it. There is nothing like Medicare here; few people have any kind of real coverage, and unless someone in the family comes through to cover it there would have been no operation. My wife came home “empty-handed” twice after being told both times by her mom that she didn’t want it done. Her mother said the operation was too expensive, and that she had lived long enough and it was better to just let it be. Finally, I explained that there was NO CHOICE; with her femur broken and splintered she would likely die of a long drawn out painful infection. I sent my wife back and told her to TELL her mom that she WOULD have the operation and it didn’t matter WHAT she said. At this, realizing that she could just relax and be the cared for dependent again, she bowed to our more aggressive insistence and relented.

The cost of putting her leg back together would be out of the question for the average Filipino—150,000 pesos, about $3500. Not so much by US medical cost standards, but it might as well be a million bucks for most folks here. Luckily I am not the only person in the family with at least some form of means, or at least access to getting a loan for it. One of my wife’s older sisters married an American more than 30 years ago and has a life in the states. They make fair money but they just put big bucks on a house in New Jersey and are as strapped as me. But, between the two of us we came up with it. It’s all part of marrying into the average family here—as a foreigner, you basically become the go-to-guy when these sorts of emergencies inevitably pop up. If you aren’t willing to step up and help out you shouldn’t even consider marrying one of these girls. Or maybe you can marry one that comes from a well-to-do family. Good luck with that.

A fellow expat recently required almost the exact same operation as my mother-in-law. Out of curiosity we found out what the same hospital was charging him for the same operation. Unbelievably, they charged him 400,000 pesos! That’s $9300, more than two and half times MORE than what they charged to do the same thing for my wife’s mom. It’s an unfair practice that bugs us expats to no end—to get charged so much more than the local rate. It SHOULD be illegal, but I guess it’s not. Pretty much anything goes when it comes to commerce it seems. There’s the Filipino price and then there is the foreigner price. It applies to almost everything. It’s why I NEVER go with my wife to the market. But there’s not much I can do about it if I’M the one requiring medical care—I can’t very well wear a disguise trying to fool ‘em into a local price, or COULD I?

The diveboat is the way to go

Most of our training dives commenced from the resort’s dive boat. This held true for both my basic and advanced training.

There are definitely advantages diving off a boat versus just walking out into the water from the shore. For one thing it’s easier going by boat. A guy with painful load bearing joints, like me, much appreciates not having to walk even a few steps with a heavy tank strapped to the back. Pursuant to NOT having to carry 50 pounds of tank for even a single step, the Big Apple dive boat experience for me meant someone picked up my tank and held it in place while I strapped it on, right there as I sat in the place from which I would fall into the water—now that I’ve been spoiled like that by those guys, it’s the ONLY way to fly as far as I’m concerned.

Getting into the water off a dive boat wasn’t a new experience for me—I’d done several from Coral Cove’s boat before it finally crapped out. What WAS new was the feel of it. There is an air of excitement going over the side with a whole crew of other divers. When it was just the two of us, Don and I would usually take turns capsizing ourselves singly back into the water. It was unrushed and casual.

On the other hand, going over the side on a Big Apple boat trip was definitely NOT easygoing. After the second time I even joked that I felt like a paratrooper jumping into Normandy. As soon as we entered the boat, Jamie would start his spiel as he helped us strap into our BCDs, “Okay, put your fins on and get ready to go. Check yourselves, check each other. As soon as we get to the point around the bend we’ll be going right in. And please, when you go, it’s important that we ALL enter the water at the same time. Last week, a fella waited a second and his tank landed right on my head. It hurt like hell.”

Almost every time we went out on the boat there were two groups of divers—our band of merry trainees and two instructors, along with a group of adventure divers, already certified. Our group rarely dove with the other, and usually we got out first. I learned quickly to start focusing on diving as soon as I stepped foot on board, there was no lollygagging or time for joking around. I pulled on my fins, strapped on my buoyancy compensator, made sure my regulators provided air, and tried my mask on for fit, usually more than once.

Jamie grabs a bamboo pole and pushes us back from the beach. Soon, the driver roars the motor and speeds us on our way. Usually, in less than five minutes, without even a hint that the boat is about to slow down we hear the warning to get ready. No sooner than the boat begins to slow down we hear, “Okay, regulators in, masks on; divers, get ready to go in. On three. One. Two. Three.” And with hardly a moment to think about it, we all push over backwards into the water.

They probably did it that way, especially for us new guys, to try to prevent someone from hesitating. It was never a problem for me, even the first time I did it, but I understand that sometimes a new diver will balk. It’s a bit of a leap of faith if you’ve never done it before. You are more than four feet above the water and it’s definitely not something that comes naturally—throwing your body blindly back into the wet unknown. So, making the departure a hurried proposition is probably a pretty effective technique to take some of the anticipation out of the equation for the new guys—don’t let ‘em think about it, just make ‘em do it.

And now that I think about it, I remember one afternoon last year sitting up on the veranda at Coral Cove observing the dive boats come and go, and watching an evidently new diver unable to get into the water, still being coached by his very patient instructor on “how easy” it is do it, and STILL trying to convince him fifteen minutes after all the other divers had long since submerged. It would have been a lot easier to do it the military bootcamp way—first berating and shaming the fraidy-cat; and if that doesn’t work, just shoving him straight back into the drink.

PADI doesn’t seem to teach it this way, but every time I go back into the water from my perch on the side of the boat I naturally end up doing a reverse 360° after splashing in. It feels great, a real rush actually. Holding my mask and regulator on tight to my face with my left hand leaves my right free to protect my head. I keep that hand high right up until the moment my backwards spin brings the underside of the boat back into view. There have been times when having that hand up has kept me from banging my head into the side of the boat, or on a rare occasion it’s helped me to avoid head butting another diver.

Once all are in the water the normal drill is that all divers are supposed to meet at the rear of the boat, but the Big Apple boat doesn’t hang around long enough for that to happen. There were times when it was already on the way to being gone before I even got situated at the surface. That’s actually a good thing since once the boat is out of the way all divers can then see each other.

In the water, the boat already fading into the distance, we never stayed long at the surface. If no one spoke up it was assumed that everyone was good to go. The dive master makes a thumb down motion and down we all went. The dive was underway.

At the end of the dive, back on the surface, that is when the primary advantage to a boat dive becomes obvious—there is no swimming and walking back in to the shore when a boat is involved. I think THAT is my favorite reason for diving from a boat.

Besides saving on energy, diving off a boat also saves on air. I noticed that most of our dives only lasted between 35 and 45 minutes, but when no time is spent on getting to the actual dive area then a 40 minute dive is not so bad at all.

If we were fortunate we didn’t have long to wait for the boat to make its way back to us where we floated like bobbers around the portable diver down buoy. Several times the other group’s dive was either considerably longer than ours was, or they were that much farther away. There was one dive where the five of us drifted several hundred meters past the spot from which we initially came up. We actually floated almost all the way past the resort. It was taking so long for the boat to return that we joked that we should just swim our way back home.

But usually the boat waits for us nearby. Once the boatman spots us, in no time at all the dive boat approaches and crawls to a stop. All divers make their way to the left side, where the ladder is. I always hang on with my left hand to the rope draped along the hull while removing my flippers, handing each one up as I take it off. Then unstrapping my BCD vest I let the boatmen pull it up with attached tank onto the deck as I do my best to push the heavy thing up for them from the water. After that, I pull myself along the rope to the ladder and heave aboard. Once all are back on the boat and seated on the narrow ledge along the top of the hull, we chatter away about the dive as the boat speeds us back to the resort.

If I get to do it a hundred times, or a hundred times a hundred, I can’t imagine diving EVER getting old. I’m ready to go right now in fact.

.....just shrug.

The routine of all the training dives involved first accomplishing some instructional tasks, after which we got to do some underwater exploring just for the fun of it. And so once PADI instructor Peter was satisfied with our progress on that first of our six training dives he signaled us to follow him for a pleasurable little tour of the Sabang cove.

We fell into the same pattern as the one we had on the way out to the training spot. Peter led, followed by the three of us trainees. Jamie, as he always did, accomplished the grunt work, watching over us from his rearguard position.

Our adventure swim along the bottom of the Sabang cove took us in a looping clockwise path around and beneath the eastern floating bar. I was actually surprised at how visually pleasing the area is. My original dive mentor, Don, assured me that it was flat and sandy and doesn’t have much to offer. After a half dozen dives in those waters though, I must heartily disagree with his assessment. The fish are plentiful, colorful, and quite large, especially compared to the ones I am used to seeing on the other side of the peninsula on the Coral Cove side. Not only are they larger for the most part, but evidently people have been feeding them, because they are not the least bit shy of divers and in fact approach almost to the point of bumping into you as you swim among them.

I never cease to be amazed at the diversity of the life forms I am privileged to observe in the waters off Mindoro. I saw many of the same species as are available over in the Coral Cove waters, but I also observed a myriad of species that I have never seen before.

But then, in the midst of marveling at all the wonderful biodiversity all around me, I noticed something disturbing ahead and to the right of our direction of travel. It was a huge cloud of localized silt in an otherwise clear area of water. It was most curious. I wondered what could possibly be causing such a thing.

Pedro led us toward the murkily obscured section of water while keeping our track to the side of it. I think he was also curious as to what was causing the phenomenon. It wasn’t long before it became obvious as to its nature—it was entirely manmade.

In fact, what we were looking at was a gaggle of divers, all knotted up around what appeared to be a large isolated coral mound. It was impossible to discern how many of them there were, what they were up to, or the size of the coral mass because they had so much of the bottom stirred up. If I had to guess though, I’d say there were about a dozen of them. Some of them would become entirely visible for a second or two as they swam in and out of the mass of agitated water. Mostly, all that could be seen in the messy patch of sea bottom was the occasional set of kicking fins and a slew of exhaust bubbles rising above the muddy murk.

If I had to describe what it was that they appeared to be doing, I would say that they were wallowing; just like pigs do to a patch of dirt, turning that patch into a muddy morass as they self indulgently roll and thrash about in the pig made muck. So yeah, whoever they were, they were wallowing like pigs, like sea pigs.

My next thought, ‘WHY are they doing it?’ It’s frustrating to see something so intrusive like that. I mean we are all supposed to be recreational divers, which by definition SHOULD mean that we stay OFF the bottom, keeping our hands OFF the coral and the creatures. In other words, we’re supposed to look and NOT touch!

Out of the water back at the dive shop, as we downloaded and prepped our gear for our upcoming dive off the resort’s dive boat, I began to ask around about the dreadful thing I had just witnessed.

“Those were Koreans in that mass gaggle, weren’t they?”

“Yup.”

“So what the heck were they doing man? They were digging on the bottom and messing around with something down there. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” I asked.

He shrugged. “They do what they do.” I began to notice that he was not comfortable with answering my questions about the Koreans. Perhaps they’d been warned not to talk them down or to say anything negative about a group of nationals that have become very influential, even powerful, in this country.

Even so, I refused to stop with the questions. “Well, wait a minute; don’t they have dive masters like you guys? I mean, there’s no way any dive master in this resort would allow that kind of obviously destructive behavior while diving. I’m just not following any of this.”

“Yes, they have dive masters; they’re Korean.”

One of the other American tourists, a certified diver not part of the staff, chimed in, “Did you hear about the Korean guy who “harvested” a giant clam and then had a party where he grilled it at a barbeque? The word is it cost him 150,000 pesos in fines.”

I piped up. “Whoa! Really? Dang, that was one expensive clam bake, eh?"

Still feeling aggravated I asked another, pretty much rhetorical question: “So, that’s why the local tourism association has supposedly passed the ordinance that we’re not supposed to dive or snorkel with gloves? They really think that’s going to stop the abuse?"

All my questions were and are academic, completely rhetorical. The answer is and always will be merely a shrug. I've said too much already I suspect.

“Bup. Bup. Bup. Bup. Bup…”

Once he recovered from his self-induced coughing fit it took less than five minutes for the electrician to return from the surface 20 feet above us. Dropping through the water he settled himself to his earlier position on the other side of his fireman buddy from me. This time when Pedro signaled for him to perform the tossed regulator exercise he did so with no problem.

On that dive one of the other more notable requisite undertakings we did at the instructor’s behest is actually a variation on the regulator toss. It is based on the scenario that a diver’s air supply has stopped, requiring immediate access to the dive buddy’s alternate air source. This very situation is a prime reason that smart divers always do so in pairs.

When it was time for me to practice what to do in case of the dreaded “out of air” emergency, instructor Pedro approached and parked himself directly to my front where he immediately indicated that I was to perform the “out of air” drill.

First, using my right hand, I sawed across my throat using the age old gesture for dead or kill. In diving however, the kill gesture means “out of air.” I then pointed at his spare regulator, which in his case was stowed right on the front of his vest at chest level, and then made as if I was putting a regulator in my mouth.

He made the okay signal signifying he understood and pointed at the spare regulator stowed on the middle of his chest. I removed my regulator, allowed it to fall, and then, taking Pedro’s extra Reg from its stowage clip on his front, I placed it in my mouth and cleared it.

As soon as I had Pedro’s extra Reg cleared and I was breathing okay, I grasped his forearm with my right hand in a Roman handshake and gave him the “up” signal by pointing upward with raised left thumb. Joined in this fashion facing each other, to conclude the scenario we swam slowly to the surface. All three of us students took turns accomplishing this.

Of course there is an important reason for going through all these at times uncomfortable sets of diving circumstances. It’s simple, one can know and understand intellectually what is supposed to be done IF something bad happens, but until the steps are actually tried in the real open water setting at depth, there is a good chance that when bad things ACTUALLY happen that panic WILL rear its ugly head.

Obviously, panic is NOT a good thing to experience, especially while diving, for once panic sets in the mind ceases to function rationally. The problem though is that being in trouble in the water will almost always brings on a case of the panics, UNLESS that person has trained for what to do in case of THAT specific problem.

Thus the dive problem exercises, because even better than thinking a problem through is being able to get through it using muscle memory, where the body goes into instinct mode once it’s assigned a task. But THE only way to establish these instinctive muscle memories is to put the body through its paces BEFORE the emergency so that later the mind doesn’t have to do much except to push the “go” button.

A buddy who did 25 years as a navy diver once told me that it was his experience that humans at depth, breathing compressed tank air, lose a quarter of their brainpower. He couldn’t explain WHY he knew this to be, but the longer I observe myself and others in the scuba environment, the more I am agreeing with him. Perhaps its because of the properties of the compressed air, or maybe it’s the effects of pressure on the brain. Personally, I think it has more to do with just being underwater. The primitive human down deep in each of us just can’t accept being submerged; so, an internal struggle goes on between this ancient primal us and the modern rational us, and it results in reduced acumen.

All that goes to help explain why so many of us tend to lose our minds when we find ourselves submerged in water; even with a breathing apparatus we can still “lose it.” Is it any wonder that water boarding has been found to be one of the most successful ways to crack even the toughest person’s will?

Therefore, the human tendency to react at the first hint of a problem underwater by going for where the air is, MUST be controlled. There really is only one way to do this and that is to place beginning divers into situations that MAKE them experience various types of discomfort, such as removing the air source from the mouth, or taking off the mask and forcing them to swim to the surface without it.

Once the trainee has gone through these unpleasant conditions however, and they’ve proven to themselves (to their inner primordial self) that they CAN go through them and survive, the battle is won. Well, hopefully it is. Sometimes, the only way to know if you will actually react properly is when a bad thing actually happens. In the meantime, all one can do is prepare and to continue to prepare. With me being the eternal pessimist, I ALWAYS assume that these bad things WILL happen, so I tend never to stop preparing.

For instance, let’s say a freak monster current smacks into you at depth plowing you ass over tea kettle into a pile of coral. Your mask comes off and your Reg becomes damaged and unusable. First of all, scuba diving with a mask is nothing like scuba without one. A mask does two things, it keeps the eyes free of water for clear vision, but even more importantly it keeps water from entering the airway through the nostrils. Just ask my classmate from my last post about how bad THAT can be!

So, two of the worst imaginable things have happened at more than 60 feet down—your mask is gone and you have no air! What do you do? Well, if you’ve been trained for these things as all basically certified PADI open water divers are, it really should be no problem. You think it through step by step.

The first thing is to get some air, either your own spare source, IF it’s still okay; or hopefully, your dive buddy is right there waiting to give you his spare Reg.

But what do you do if that crazy current has swept your buddy too far away to be of any help and the collision with the coral has wrecked the air valve on your tank so that even your spare is no good? Of course, you must head to the surface so you can breathe again, but, you must avoid panic and remember your training.

A mad dash for the surface could well kill you if you forget what you’ve learned, the primary thing being that air breathed into your lungs from a tank at 60 feet down will expand the lungs almost twice their size by the time the surface is reached. At that point you will likely die from burst blood vessels in your lungs, and it won’t feel good either.

But I don’t have to wonder what it feels like to lose my mask or to be at depth with no regulator because my instructor had us practice responding to all the variations of that very realistic scenario. Aside from having us ascend using another diver’s alternate air source, Pedro had us try on for size several other emergency possibilities. For instance, we had to swim with no mask, a very strange feeling indeed, since you have to consciously keep positive air pressure in the nose to keep water from entering the nostrils. (I suppose you could also just hold your nose, but I never did find that to be necessary using positive nose pressure).

We also had to demonstrate the learned ability to ascend from depth without suffering lung injuries. It’s actually quite simple, as the diver rises he releases air. I liked Pedro’s preferred method of doing this much more than the way it’s demonstrated in the PADI video clips where the ascending diver makes a continuous “ahhhhh” noise. Instead of doing that, which might cause a diver to run out of air, Pedro had us make a “Bup” sound repetitively. “Bup. Bup. Bup. Bup. Bup…” This allows the expanding air to escape from the lungs while also giving the diver more control over the air’s release.

Smart guy that Pedro.