Random Memory

As I was typing up yesterday's post, I was to be reminded of another memory, but it had nothing to do with yesterday's post on the weekend adventure.

I was trained as a scuba diver, as a part of my rather shady past.  I am not sure what that training had to do with my unfriendly assignment to the Middle East, but maybe they were just covering bases - no idea then, absolutely none now!  I do remember that the guy whom trained me was a Navy type named Don and I have no doubt that he has long since died in a diving accident - he was even more reckless than me!  But, then I had known a few WWII divers in Europe, and often thought of them and their broken bodies as a young teenager.  What drove rational men to take such risks with their bodies?  Today, I am in awe of such men.  And, I was at least cautious with anything having to do with water!

And my spotter, Dutchman, I just now remember had a major accident with a spear gun and I had to save the poor guy!  It was both the scariest and weirdest thing I had ever seen.  Image you are diving and your dive partner is about twenty feet away, he is placing the bands on his spear gun and sudden he is jerked backward and just the size of his eyes told you that something horrible had happened!  I kicked over to him as fast as I could and saw that both of his hands were not usable for some reason, which I could not understand, but I could understand the spear which had pegged his right foot to the sandy floor.  A brown mist raised from both of his hands and foot.  Blood?  What the heck?

I pulled the foot off of the bottom of the ocean and hit his auto inflator.  At the surface, I had to pull his mask back as his hands were unusable and he could not kick, due to the spear still in his foot!  So, on the way back to the shore, with me playing tugboat, I learned about how one of the speargun's bands had broken, the metal clips slicing through both hands, he jerked back and a finger caught the trigger, firing the spear with one band - through his foot and pegging him to the bottom!  Oh how we laughed later!

But, what brought this memory back was the random memory of Marvella or Malvena, whatever her name, that we did a dive and met a very friendly woman by the name (or all things) as Kitty!  She invited us back to her and her sister's vacation condo for a party.  I was a little leery, Dutchman was all for it!  So we went and met her sister, Bunny!  I could not believe it!  Later in the night I asked Bunny what was Kitty's real name.  She got her sister's driver's license out of her purse and showed me - her name really was Kitty!  Seems her father really liked, Gunsmoke, a show I had never seen.  I was fearful of asking where, "Bunny" came from ... It was a fun night, lots of lobster, lots of wine, lots of diving stories and poor Dutchman trying to find his car in the wee hours - were we to ever make it back to our place and away from the dangers of where this party was going!

And surprisingly, many decades later I was to run into Kitty again.  Yeah, she had given up diving, given up partying and settled down - husband and kids to boot!  I was happy for her.  I sure hoped that her children were a bit more discrete than she had been ...