Father F’n Time: that old bearded bastard who steals our life one minute after another. Time, arguably the most valuable asset we all possess; certainly, the one thing we can all agree that we wish we had more of. Time, swiftly stolen from us without as much as a moment’s warning. What makes this theft particulary devious is that we barely know it’s happening, even as it happens.

For me, it’s almost incomprehensible. Sometimes, I literallly can not believe how much time has gone by and how quickly. It can be downright shocking. However, people with young children tell me that one of the most frustrating and amazing things about watching their children grow is just that: watching their children grow, realizing the speed at which they are growing. As if the instant they become accostomed to a certain temperment or pant size, it’s gone, just like that.

This is on my mind because, the other day, I was doing trying to figure how long I have been doing something. This almost always leads to a jolting realization. I remember the day my buddy Dovev called me specifically to tell me that (and I quote), “As of today, we have officially been out of college longer than we were in it.” For some reason, this was very important to him and undoubtedly something he just instantly realized and was shaken up by.

For my own part, I was trying to figure out how long I had been volunteering as a SCUBA diving instructor. It was something I started doing back when I lived in Brighton, when I worked as a lifeguard at the local YMCA. I used to work the same nights as the SCUBA class and I became friendly with the instructor. Soon after, I signed up my girlfriend for lessons (a pretty cool Xmas present, if I do say so myself), and right around the time she finished the class, I started helping out as an instructor.

Well, it turns out I’ve been doing it for over five years. FIVE YEARS. Startling, to say the least.

I was wondering about this as I contemplated the start of my official instructor training. You see, for the last five years I’ve been volunteering underneath an instructor. I’ve never been certified to certify someone, if you catch what I’m saying.

A couple things happened over the last year or so that led me to this decision.

The first was that last summer, Jerry (our fearless leader), became unable to dive and requested I take the students out for the certification dives myself. Whoa, whoa, whoa…..wait a minute. This meant that I was going to be in the ocean, with students, for their official certification dives, even though I was not actually an instructor. Can you spell lawsuit??? I can. Anyway, I did it. I mean, what could I do? I had been working with students for the last eight weeks and I knew that if I didn’t do it, it would be a while before they got their chance in the ocean. Plus, let’s be honest here, I wanted to see if I could handle it. Turns out I could; kind of.

It wasn’t a great dive by any means. Actually, it was pretty lousy, and at one point I almost panicked. Lucky for me, I had two excellent staff members with me, assisting me on the dive. There were six students and I had two other instructors with me. That makes nine people, and thats a lot of divers trying to stay together in the Atlantic Ocean (visibility was about eight-to-nine feet that day). I had succesfully taken the students out to about 30 feet of water (my original plan) and was just starting to relax and take in the landscape. That’s when I lost my compass bearing. Not just slightly lost my bearing, but got completely turned around. I picked the direction I thought was back to shore, got my group’s attention, and started swimming. About two minutes later I realized I was getting colder and the water was getting darker. Not good. I stopped again. I checked my compass and it looked back at me, started spinning round and round and then burst into flames!

Okay, that’s a lie, but it was of no help, that’s for sure.

At this point I motioned to all the students that they needed to swim to the surface. Once on the surface, I found the shore (my sense of direction is not that bad) and calmly told the students that I wanted them on the shore so we could practice ascending and descending from deep water. At this point, we were about 40 feet deep, which is about the max you would ever want to take a beginner diver. Now ascending and descending in a group from deep water is a valuable skill and no doubt it was good practice for them, but as you can imagine, I was shaken up. I got them back to shore and we did our critique of the dive. I’ll never forget one of the better students from the class giving me this weird grin like he knew what happened while I was critiquing them on the dive. Bastard.

That was the first thing that made my decision difficult.

The second was a general malaise that I’ve felt towards the class itself. We have had an unbelievably dry spell lately with students, usually having no more than one or two at a time (as opposed to five years ago, when we regularly had six or eight). But it’s not just the lack of students. It’s almost as if my time with the class has run its own course. I mean, you can only apprentice for so long (in anything). At some point, the student must become the teacher and start doing things his way. Otherwise, you start trying to infiltrate the class with your own strategies and your own techiques. I’ve felt myself doing that lately, and I guess that I started knowing that the end was near. It was time for me to take the next step, lest I ever have time to do it.

That leads me to the final reason. Time. Mine is not becoming any more available. If anything, I have significantly less and less free-time every year. If I was ever gooing to do it, I knew that I needed to it done now.

In order to get my certification, I need to be available for about ten weekends: both days, all day. That’s a lot of time. I figured if I started at the end of March, I’d have a chance to be done by June and thus not interfere with check-out dives for my students or any other summer plans that may roll along.

So for those reasons, and a few other ones, I decided that now was the time for me to get certified. You know what’s scary? Those other reasons. There is a big part of me that is doing this because I feared that I wouldn’t. Can you believe that? I’m doing this almost just to prove myself wrong. I am afraid that this period of my life will be just that: a period in my life that I was into diving. Which means that maybe I would move into something else later on, like golfing or sailing….and devote my time and energy to that. I don’t want the last five years to not equal up to something. It’s like I see this final class as my graduation, proof to myself that, aside from the great diving and great memories, my last five years accomplished something.

It’s strange because I see this class as the end of something, and not necessarily the beginning. I mean, it’s a great gig. I can imagine no better second job in life than being a diving instructor. Running a few classes a year with a handful of students, making an extra hundred bucks or so on the side, and meeting some cool people along the way. I mean that’s perfect. Ideally, this will also double as my retirement job….no better way to coast into the sunset than by living the Jimmy Buffet dream and running my own little dive program in the Keys….wastin’ away.

What strikes me is that the vast majority of people who become dive instructors are doing so as a beginning. It is the beginning of their next career, the launching point of their profession. For me, it’s the graduation of my last five years. I have no real plans on teaching any classes when I’m done. If anything, I’m a little burnt out with teaching diving. In fact, I know I’m burnt out, but I think it has more to do with teaching within the existing structure, and not with teaching in general. In fact, to be honest, the thought of having my own class, with my own vibe and my own teaching style, really, really excites me. It’s just that I don’t really think I’ll do it. At least not right away. I mean, it’s a lot of work. Renting pool time, getting access to all of the gear for the students, insurance, textbooks, etc…To be honest, I don’t even really know what it entails, I usually just show up and teach.

On the other hand, I’ve had a few people express interest and my buddy Dan has a pool, and I thought it would be cool to teach a few friends in his pool this summer. Maybe see what it’s like to teach on my own, devise my own lesson plans, and work on my style, etc.

Being a dive instructor, you have to play a fine line between being laid back and friendly and being a real hard ass. There are a lot of dangerous things about diving and those things must be understood. The best comparison I ever heard was that diving is like having a baby. There are a million horrible things that can happen when giving birth and many of them are extremely dangerous and deadly, but 99.9% of the time, none of them happen and everything is just fine. However, it’s important you know what those dangerous things are, so that you can make sure they never happen. Diving is the same way.

Done. I’m a midwife.