OP
Leejnd
Contributor
I've read the first post, and skimmed through the rest of the thread. A few thoughts...
Thank you, LeeAnne, for being brave enough to post your experiences, and moreso for continuing to post in this thread. Many times people post their negative experiences and wind up abandoning their threads due to the holier than thou, self-righteous, armchair quarterbacks.
Speaking of which, as has been mentioned before on SB, it is so easy to type from the comfort of your home or workplace what you would or wouldn't have done in similar circumstances. Logic (generally) prevails when one has time to think about the situation.
To those of you who know better than and relentlessly criticize the OPs of these types of threads, I hope you fare just as well in a real-life situation as you do onscreen.
Thank you SO MUCH for this post! It really made me feel better, and helped me to see that not everyone out there on SB is going to go for the "easy kill" and dump on the folks who take the risk of putting ourselves out there. This tendency for people who post their incidents to get eviscerated by armchair-quarterbacks is really dangerous, and I know for a fact has prevented many other people from posting their own incidents and lessons-learned. Nobody enjoys having others, especially strangers (who are often anonymous) pick them apart.
And really, what I've been subjected to in here is MILD compared to what I've seen happen to some others!
Of course, some of it is necessary...meaning, the whole point of these threads is to learn, so we DO have to bring to light the mistakes, and ensure that the lessons are clear. But what is completely of no value are the posters who pop in, skim the thread, and then post a "well that would NEVER happen to me" comment.
Which brings up some final thoughts on this whole episode, and what may, in fact, be the most important lesson to be learned of all!
To those who read these stories and immediately think "that would never happen to me" or "I wouldn't make that mistake" or "what an idiot, this is what she/he should have done" or "I would have done this instead", here is what I want you to realize:
The mistakes I made could be made by you too. If you think you are above making mistakes, even these SAME mistakes, you are wrong, and that could be your undoing.
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent, quality person. I'm no kid - I'm about to turn 50 (aack! that's hard to admit!), I've been married for 25 years (to my first husband!), I've raised two good kids. I used to be a telecommunications engineer, then I had a good run as a freelance writer (I've even been published), and now have reached a decent level of success in my third career in Biotech. I've never been in trouble (other than a few traffic tickets) and consider myself a moral, ethical person. I even do jury duty when called upon. I took my dive training very seriously, and make a point of keeping up with my skills.
I'm not saying all of this to have anyone say "oh she thinks she's better than me". I'm saying all of this so you will say to yourself, "She IS me! I'm just LIKE her!" The vast majority of divers that I know are also intelligent, high-quality people. So if you read my story and really, truly think to yourself, "I would never make those mistakes!" then you are making a mistake right there.
I too have read many threads in this forum, and often, my initial reaction was "what a boneheaded move! I would never do that!" But then I stop myself, and try to remember that I could have done it too -- faced with the same exact scenario, I might very well have made the same decisions. And so might you. I have been in a few scary situations in other parts of my life, and I realize that you just can't predict how you are going to react when faced with an emergency...especially one that requires immediate action. We'd all LIKE to think that we would do the right and smart thing. But trust me - you don't know that you would until it happens to you. Nobody's infallible.
The key is to keep up your knowledge. Read these threads, and absorb the lessons. And keep on reading them, because over time they slip to the back. If you don't dive frequently, then don't just go diving without somehow refreshing your knowledge on the basics. The last things that you learned are going to be the first things you remember.
I made some questionable decisions, and did some things wrong. I also made some RIGHT decisions. I learned a few things. And I think the most IMPORTANT thing that I learned is that I can never again read someone else's story and self-righteously think to myself: Oh, I would NEVER do that! Because when yer in the thick of it, guess what: you could.
End of lecture.
