Every scuba instructor has training horror stories. My story begins on a sunny, calm Caribbean day. The ocean was perfect; there was only a gentle breeze and it was quiet - too quiet - when a family approached the dive shop. Hungarian-Americans, the parents were chattering agitatedly in their native language in what appeared to be an argument with their 10- and 12-year-old boys. As they arrived at the desk, the two red-headed boys rotated in unison, focused their beady little eyes on mine and smirked. Their parents had signed them up for a Discover Scuba Diving course, and wanted to know how long it would take. When I told them, smiles spread across the parents' faces and they visibly relaxed. They checked their watches and skipped off into the resort, audibly sighing in relief as they abandoned their children to me. This should have been a warning.
The pool training went horribly. The boys took over three hours to complete five basic scuba skills, not because they were incapable, but because they appeared to have consumed an excess of sugar and caffeine before their 8 a.m. class and were having difficulty comprehending my relatively simple instructions. This was most likely because they were concentrating on what I could only assume was a bouncing contest. I saw them both breach at least three feet above the water despite the fact that they were wearing scuba tanks.
Although they were blueish and shivering, I had to march the children from the pool straight to the dive boat in order arrive on time for the afternoon dive. As I hauled the two squirming monsters across the sand, I passed their parents who were grinning from ear to ear and waving at me. The parents met us on the dock, but when the kids started to complain about wearing wetsuits, I turned to find two clouds of dust where the parents had been only a moment before. They had escaped! I began to suspect I was the most over-priced babysitter in the Riviera Maya.
After repeatedly slithering out of their dive gear to dance about the moving boat, the kids calmed down enough for me to get them into the water and down over a shallow reef. Since they refused to kick, I pulled them over the reef, swimming with a kid in each hand. I was attempting to point out underwater wonders when we came upon a beautiful boxfish. With preternatural speed, the child on my right reached out and caught the boxfish by the tail. Despite my explicit instructions to touch nothing, he pulled the fish backwards to get a closer look. The poor fish's eyes were bulging out as it finned frantically forward to no avail.
Either Right-Side-Child didn't hear my agonized screaming, or he didn't realize that it signified that he was doing something wrong. I had to physically pry his hand from the tortured fish which meant that it was necessary to momentarily release my death-grip on Left-Side-Child in order to use both hands. Within two seconds, Left-Side-Child miraculously learned how to use his fins and covered a surprising amount of ground. The chase was on!
Dragging Right-Side-Child (who still wouldn't kick), I pursued Left-Side-Child for a good minute before I was able to grab his hand. He had jetted off over a sandy, upward-sloping area and as a result both children were slowly starting to rise from the increased buoyancy of the expanding air in their buoyancy compensators (BCDs). Deflating both children's BCDs, I decided my dive was over and released my surface marker buoy to signal the boat. The surface marker buoy was connected to a long string which I held in my hand.
As if on cue, Left-Side-Child got some water in his mask, and put himself vertical to clear the mask of water. He kicked upwards as he cleared, and began to float towards the surface. I dropped the surface marker buoy string and twisted my body to reach Left-Side-Child while attempting to keep Right-Side-Child (who was flailing around in protest) at a safe depth. At some point during my gymnastics, the string attached to the surface marker buoy became tangled around my tank valve. Afraid to release either of the unpredictable children, I tried to signal them to unhook the string from my tank valve. They misunderstood my signs and used the buddy system to tie the string to my regulator first stage in an unusual, but highly effective, knot.
Unable to ascend tangled in the string, and too knotted up to cut the string with my knife, I made myself as negatively buoyant as possible and sat down on the sand. Releasing the boys was out of the question, so I made each child grab one of my fins while I removed my scuba unit and untied the knot myself. This was a surprisingly effective solution until Right-Side-Child spotted another boxfish dottering over the sand and attempted to swim over to it while still holding my fin.
Returning to the dock, the children's parents slowly approached. It might have been my imagination, but they appeared to be dragging their feet. "How did it go?" the father asked in a small, timid voice. "We went diving," I said. "Will you take them again tomorrow?" The mother asked, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "No." I said. Strangely, neither parent appeared surprised.
