First published in the Bastrop (Louisiana) Daily Enterprise, June 2, 1997:
A couple of months ago, Hubert asked me, “What kind of animal would you like to be?” This is the kind of question I’ve come to expect from my nine-year-old son, and I answered, “I dunno. What kind of animal do you want to be?” “A lion, I guess, or a wolf. Now it’s your turn.”
I take these inquiries rather seriously, so I gave the matter a bit of thought. “An octopus, I suppose. Although my experiences with octopussery have been somewhat limited, they have been pleasant. Yes. An octopus.”
“Have you ever seen a real octopus?” Hubert asked, warming to the idea, “With long arms and suckery things that grab you and pull off your skin before they eat you alive?” “Well, yes and no. I have been swimming with octopi in the East China Sea, but I’ve never been eaten alive by one. I have, however, eaten steamed octopus tentacle slices in the Ryukyu Islands, and whole ones in a gumbo in Patagonia. Very tasty.”
After Hubert went outside to play, I thought about the idea some more, and decided that I would, indeed, make a fine octopus. They are intelligent little invertebrates, and have long been a source of interest and amazement for this landlocked country boy who’s always been fascinated by the sea. When I found myself stationed on the tropical island of Okinawa in 1970, I was sure I’d found paradise. The decidedly unpacific Pacific Ocean laps the eastern shore of the island, while the calmer, crystalline waters of the East China Sea lie to the west. Within a couple of months of my arrival, I’d completed a SCUBA class, and soon was spending my free time, including Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Easter, exploring the coral reefs and sandy surfzone.
My buddies and I would somehow appropriate a Marine Corps truck and driver from the motor pool, and we’d pile into the back, listening to a newfangled cassette player as we rumbled through the Okinawan countryside.
We were young and strong and fearless, and thought nothing of strapping on our tanks, fighting our way through the crashing surf, being pounded mercilessly against the jagged coral, then breaking through to the psychedelic colors of the beautiful reef.
Frequently, we’d coax shy octopi out of their rocky homes and hold them in the palms of our hands. Barracuda and deadly sea snakes were usually nearby, but never posed a threat. The visibility seemed limitless, and reef fish and certain coral varieties are unbelievably florescent.
As I fondly thought back on my diving experiences of a quarter-century past, I could feel an idea beginning to form. Within a week, I was on the telephone, calling a dive shop in West Monroe. The cost of the class wasn’t too high, and Trish graciously agreed to this new act of idiocy. After paying my deposit, I told my friend Wally, a math instructor from Tech, about the upcoming class, and he decided to join in the fun.
Recreational diving in the early 1970s was really in its infancy, and was a rather recent offspring of military diving. In my Okinawan class, our instructor would often slip up behind us, rip off our masks, turn off our air, or create other stressful situations to test our reactions. The equipment was, by today’s standards, primitive. The air tank on our back was connected to the mouth by a “double hose” apparatus which looked very much like two automotive radiator hoses. When the tank ran dry, the diver began to suffocate, and therefore knew that it was time to surface. Around our necks, we wore a “horse collar” emergency floatation device, a gizmo designed to be inflated by a carbon dioxide cartridge, and which would provide about the same amount of buoyancy as two Zip-Loc sandwich bags taped together and filled with air. We spent hours learning about the deadly sea life, memorizing complicated arm and hand signals to alert other divers to sharks, barracuda, moray eels, and sea snakes. We pored over complicated diving tables, planning controlled dives with regular stops in our ascent to avoid decompression sickness–the dreaded “bends”.
Instructional methods in 1997 are of a gentler, kinder sort. The class lasted for four weeks, and each student was responsible for reading a lengthy section of the textbook and watching an accompanying video before attending the weekly meeting. The instructor reviewed the material, answered questions, explained the procedures, and tested the students for a couple of hours, followed by two more hours of practicing the techniques in the school’s heated pool. The diving tables have been simplified, and the modern equipment makes the sport safer and easier to learn, for anyone, from a fifteen-year-old to a granny.
When we’d completed the classroom instruction and the pool sessions, the group travelled to Lake DeGray, near Arkadelphia, Arkansas, for a weekend of final testing in the open water. Trish, Maggie, Hubert, and I piled out of the van at the boat ramp on Saturday morning and waited for the dive boat to show up. Shortly, Wally and his wife arrived from Ruston, and we began to assemble our gear while we waited for the instructor to return from his outing with the “early morning group”.
Mandatory diving equipment today is extensive and expensive. The air tank is fastened into a high-tech “buoyancy compensating device”, which is worn like a vest, and can be instantly inflated or deflated with the press of a button. A single hose provides air from the tank, with another single hose provided for emergency situations. Depth gauge and pressure gauge are required, so that the diver constantly knows how deep he has travelled, and how much air remains.
I wiggled my way into the black, full-body wet suit, parading proudly around the launch area in the skintight outfit. “Hmmm,” I said, approvingly and admiringly. “I look just like a sleek young seal in this suit.” My wife sniggled and mumbled something about a closer resemblance to the Michelin Man. Jealous.
We bailed off the boat into about twenty-five feet of water. The instructor had rigged a 12 x 12-foot submerged platform about twenty feet below, where we were put through our drills and tests. The water was murky, with absolutely no horizontal visibility at all past twelve feet. All went reasonably well, and we followed the mandatory “buddy system”, with Wally and I staying together and watching each other closely. While we waited for the instructor to begin, I decided to practice some of the emergency hand signals with Wally. I made a slicing motion across my throat, followed by cupping my hand to my mouth, signifying “Out of Air/Share Your Air With Me.” Wally immediately responded by rubbing the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together, signifying “How Much Money Do You Have?” I need to get a better buddy.
During part of the drill, Wally had to practice a proper ascent to the surface, accompanied by the instructor, leaving me alone on the bottom. They stayed gone for quite a long time. When you are completely alone, under twenty feet of cold water, at the bottom of a lake, and can see only twelve feet in any direction, you have quite a lot of time to think of things. I became quite interested in knowing exactly what sort of large, toothy creatures might be lurking thirteen feet away. I became quite interested in knowing just what was going on at the surface. Nope. Can’t go up. Gotta stay here. Don’t want to be a wuss.
After awhile, breathing and heartbeat returned to normal, and I began to be overwhelmed by the sheer neatness of the experience. I lay on my back on the platform, watching the bubbles chase each other to the surface. I did a somersault or two. Small bass swam, unafraid, to within arm’s reach. A quarter-century fell away, and I was nineteen again, halfway around the world with good friends, cavorting over sand and coral. I remembered stopping by the roadside and buying a pineapple from an old papa-san, slicing it with our diving knives and eating it in the truckbed as we bumped along. There on the bottom of Lake DeGray, I started humming the song from the Beatles’ then-new Abbey Road album we’d heard on the tape player as we’d ridden along the Okinawan roads toward the pristine beach.
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’s garden, in the shade.
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octopus’s garden, near a cave.
We would be so happy, you and me,
No one there to tell us what to do.
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’s garden
With you.