HEADLINE: Note to sharks: High-maintenance woman entering water
BYLINE: STEPHANIE ALLMON
DATELINE: WACO, Texas
BODY:
"Ooh, you should take scuba with me!"
Those words dove out of my friend Allison's mouth one seemingly normal night
last month and sunk into the part of my subconscious that sometimes
convinces me lunatic ideas are good ones.
The next day, I found myself at Lake Air Scuba in Waco, explaining to the
man behind the counter that I was a very high-maintenance woman and asking
if I would look fat in a wet suit.
"I can answer a lot of questions about scuba," he laughed with an "I hope
she's not in my class" look in his eye. "But I can't help you with that
one."
With the swipe of my MasterCard, I was enrolled in a four-day course that
eventually not only taught me how to breathe underwater, but also bestowed
on me an Ultimate Truth of Life: that high-maintenance women should avoid
high-maintenance hobbies.
What is a high-maintenance woman? With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, if a
woman has more than three kinds of shower gel in the bathroom, she might be
a high-maintenance woman; if a woman goes through a "hair process" in the
morning, she might be a high-maintenance woman; if a woman picks out all her
outfits for the week and irons them on Sunday night, she might be a
high-maintenance woman. (Guilty on all three counts!)
A high-maintenance hobby is any activity that involves more know-how,
cleanup or upkeep than a high-maintenance woman's morning makeover.
Scuba fits the bill.
Here are some basic tenets of Ultimate Truth that revealed themselves to me
with each new day of scuba. I share them for the benefit of other
high-maintenance women everywhere ... and for the men who have to put up
with us.
1. You can lead a high-maintenance woman to water, but you can't make her
get her hair wet. Not without some kind of threat.
Before classes started, we'd been told to watch an instructional video and
read a scuba textbook.
I, however, used the video to fall asleep to two nights in a row, and the
manual I planned on treating like the manual in my car _ know where it is at
all times and open as needed. "I'm sure the instructor will just tell me
what I need to know," I thought.
By half an hour into the first class, when I was already drowning in a
quagmire of scuba vocabulary and procedures, I realized how wrong I was.
We'd be taking quizzes and skills tests and _ gulp _ a final exam, we were
told.
>From that point on, it was all about pride. I actually studied for class,
reviewed my skills and stayed awake for one more video viewing. Then, with a
satisfactory "B+" on my final exam, it was time to head to the lake for
skills tests.
2. High-maintenance women need to try things on for size. In private.
Before we could even dip a fin into water at Stillhouse Hollow Lake, I had
to face my biggest scuba fear of all: getting into a wet suit. Wet suits are
made of neoprene, which is Scuba for "uncooperative."
I'd been fitted for a two-piece suit back at the pool, but when I got to the
lake, it was a one-piece getup I was given. Let's just say putting this
lovely thing on entailed a muscular dive master on either side of me doing
things that, in any other setting, would have gotten them a punch in the
nose.
"One! Two! Three!" one of them signaled.
And with a tug on both sides of my body, they hoisted me off the ground
while inching up the wet suit.
Needless to say, the next day they brought me a two-piece outfit I could
handle myself.
3. High-maintenance women read way too much into things.
Somewhere between the wet suit debacle and the underwater skills tests, I
began to actually relax and notice all the sights and feelings around me
below the surface: The catfish eating hotdog bits from my hands. A small
perch nipping at my fingertip. Seaweed brushing against my face and tangling
in my gear.
But then as I listened to the Darth Vader-like "hihh-hohh" of my breathing
and floated around trying to get buoyant, my mind began to swim toward
thoughts like, "I wonder if God can see me through the water down here. And
God, if you're looking, can you make sure my last breaths don't come from a
tank on my back?"
I'd read somewhere that only about 100 scuba fatalities a year occur in the
United States, and 250 worldwide. Still, usually when there's a statistic,
I'll find a way to be a part of it. That's why ...
4. High-maintenance women need low-maintenance alternatives.
After surviving 14 hours of scuba instruction and four certification dives,
my little blue open water diver certification card felt like gold in my
hand. Despite the fact that I housed seaweed in my tankini and needed to
deep-condition my hair after two days in the lake, I couldn't help but feel
an overwhelming sense of accomplishment as I disassembled my gear.
Now people keep asking me where I'm going to go on my first diving trip.
My answer? Anywhere where there are plenty of tanned men, fruity drinks and
white sands to keep me occupied on shore in case I can't manage to get my
wet suit on.
Stephanie Allmon writes for the Waci Tribune-Herald. E-mail:
sallmon(at)wacotrib.com
LOAD-DATE: October 31, 2003
Copyright 2003 Cox Enterprises, Inc.
Cox News Service
