Before heading to the airport to board my flight to Miami, I ran into Town coun. John Irwin at the health gala and we got to talking. He asked about my trip and what I intended to do while cruising through the eastern Caribbean and I sketched a quick outline, hitting on the highlights – hug a palm tree, sit on a beach, ride a horse in a rainforest, snorkel in a coral reef and hopefully make it home again in one piece.
As I stood on the side of a catamaran sailboat, decked out for the first time in my life in a snorkel mask and flippers somewhere off the coast of Grand Turk, one of the world's finest snorkelling destinations, I thought of John and the last words he said to me at the gala.
He recounted a snorkelling adventure of his own and told me the hardest part was jumping off the boat. I won't embarrass John by telling you whether or not he managed to overcome that fear.
On this particular catamaran, they had prepared for that, installing a staircase that would allow the faint-of-heart to slowly descend into the clear blue waters to begin their snorkelling adventure.
But remembering John's words — and every bit of research I had done before I left Canada on how to survive a shark attack — I knew I couldn't take the stairs. It was a rite of passage, proof that I could overcome my fears and fling myself, flippers and all, into the open sea without fear of sharks.
Who am I kidding, there was always a fear of sharks.
The fact of the matter, however, is that for a few endless seconds, I stood on the precipice that separated me from the kind of girl who chickened out and stayed onboard the sailboat consuming rum punch and sinking farther and farther into despair and the fearless sort of person who risks everything and jumps without knowing what lay beneath the surface.
I took a deep breath and jumped, flailing my arms and kicking my flippers as I fell.
My friend reassured me my squeal was very dignified.
I didn't see any sharks. In fact, I didn't see much of all. My contact lenses had fallen victim to a series of unfortunate events the day before.
We snorkelled for 45 minutes and for 40 of those minutes, I flopped face down in the water, forgot to breathe, panicked seven seconds later, flailed around like a manatee trying to escape a speedboat, allowed my mask and breathing tube to fill with salt water and finally righted myself, gasping like I'd just survived a harrowing ordeal.
Over and over again, I gave it my best shot, scaring away everything fishy in the process and always ensuring I stayed in the middle of the group of snorklers, no matter how dedicated they were in trying to escape my flailing. After all, it's common knowledge that it's the people on the edge of the group that sharks are going to go after first, not the ones flopping around like an injured marine mammal in the middle.
Finally, five minutes before our captain blew the conch shell to call us back to our boat, I figured out how to breathe without sucking in water and for five minutes, it was just me and the Caribbean Sea and my frantic breathing.
I learned an important lesson there, floating in the Caribbean Sea and squinting at blurs that were probably fish but could have been anything, really.
I learned that vacations are very much like snorkelling; by the time you figure out how to breathe, it's time to go home.
It was one of the most important lessons I took away from my week down south, second only to the one I learned in the Bahamas.
Look both ways before you cross the street. Those cars don't stop for anybody.
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