What Would You Do In The Water?

I shower, I don’t bathe. I think the bath tub is too small for baths. Often, I’ll spend extra time in the shower playing games. But if I stay too long, my skin will soften, weaken, and get all wrinkly. I play games like mohawking my hair with soap- who doesn’t? I tip over lesser filled shampoo/conditioner bottles with my urine like a laser beam from a big gun (wink, wink, nudge nudge). When I was a kid, I used to pretend that the shower head was a Gatling gun spraying bullets at me, I’d pound my chest with my right fist and be King Kong on top of the Empire State building while holding a ‘tiny woman’ in my left hand. Of course, as I became a teenager more focus was placed on the tiny woman in my left hand and I eventually ignored the rain of bullets and focused on “her.” (again, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Now, as an adult, being King Kong is more realistic because of all my hair.

I used to wrap the soap in a wash cloth, tight like a present, and then slide it around the inside of the tub like a race car in the rain. But, my favorite thing in the shower to do is… Well, rephrase: My second favorite thing to do in the shower is to pretend I’m manning a submarine and we’ve been hit! I’ll bellow alarm sounds; rattle the plastic curtain causing an effect of confusion and delay. I’ll plug the drain and let the water fill up around my ankles as the obvious hole in the starboard fills the vessel, leaving me only a few precious minutes to save my crew. I’ll try to stop the showering with a wash cloth, or bail with empty shampoo bottles (yes, I wash my hands after touching them, you never know if someone has urinated on the bottles or not). More times than not, I manage to get the crew topside and the leak stopped and everyone is safe.

                Another watery place I like to play is in our hot tub. But I hate falling asleep in there. Well, I don’t hate it, it’s incredibly comfortable and relaxing—what I really hate is the horrible things that the warm, properly treated water does to my skin. In thirty minutes, my hands get so soft and wrinkly, worse than what aging seems to be doing to me. Sometimes, it’s so bad that my hands will actually slough off the delicate top layer. And if I’m wearing clothes, the chemicals may even soften the bright pastels of my swim trunks. So I try to be careful and not fall asleep in my hot tub, but the comfort, relaxation, and healing properties of floating in water is often worth the discomfort I must endure. But floating too long can be a problem.

                I play games there, too. I’ll see how long I can hold my breath or maybe lower myself until my eyes are just at the horizon of the water line and skim the water like a gator on the prowl. I don’t have any toys in there, because that would be weird, but the headrests pop off and make excellent flotilla I can use to attack the north shore. The steam rising off the high seas makes for excellent fog of war. And when I flip on the jets, the sea becomes turbulent with swells rising up and often capsizing my crafts… I often wonder what it would be like to be tossed off one of those headrests. I’d be a tiny spot in a large pond with all the dangers of the open sea. I’d be alone. I wonder how long I could last out there?

                I’m a certified diver and we had to tread water as part of that testing. I think they made us do it for fifteen minutes. Pretty easy if you’re calm, efficient, and know how to tread water. I’m pretty sure that I could tread water for twice that long, but I’m not willing to back that up. If I were tossed into the open sea because my water craft were capsized or sunk, I’m guessing I’d have a life jacket so I could stay afloat for several hours, maybe even a day. But I’d probably be rescued before anything tragic could happen, right?

                Now, relaxed against a soothing jet with my arms outstretched along the soft, polished fiberglass, I toss the capsized headrest to and fro with my cozy toes. Could I last a day with a life jacket in open tropical water? What would I think about? I’d miss my family, I’d be hungry, tired, and thirsty. I’d probably be mad and scared too. Crap! I didn’t think about sea creatures or hypothermia.

“Ug, now I’m just making myself uncomfortable in this warm tub. That’s dumb. Stop thinking about it, get out, dry off, go make yourself a drink and watch television. Chocolate sounds good, too.”

                And that’s pretty much my standard M.O. … “When the goin’ gets tough, Brad goes home.” I think I’m an empathetic person, but never do I assume I know what it would actually be like to be in a situation someone else has endured and I haven’t. I never have the words to write or say to someone who has endured something I’m pretty sure I couldn’t. Put yourself in a survival situation that is real, where some people died, and some survived. Which group would you be in? Perhaps your own experiences already answer that question:

9/11, New York in a heap?

The current war that won’t end?

Crime?

Home invasion?

The stealing of your children?

                I don’t know. I haven’t endured any of this directly, and by no means whatsoever is this an effective list, I just put down the first things that came to my head…Fill in your own blank and ask yourself what you would do and if you think you would survive.

                I saw “Jaws” in 1975 and again recently to show my boys. Captain Quint tells a riveting story about how he survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. I remember his story sounding cool, being told by a salty sea dog, with the chops to back it up. But I knew it was “Hollywood” and that someone wrote that story for him and he was acting. It wasn’t a true story, just writing and acting. However, as it turns out, I don’t know everything.

                The story isn’t a story at all. It’s a true happening, Google “USS Indianapolis” from behind the comfort of your warm coffee mug and cozy chair. Click the first link (http://www.ussindianapolis.org/) and read it and spend some time on that web site. I just finished “In Harm’s Way” by Doug Stanton and I highly recommend it. But more than that, the details and history behind this ship and its importance to our freedoms we enjoy today are wrapped up in the dead boys that sailed it, on the bottom of the Marianas Trench that devoured it, but kept alive by the survivors and families that endured it. Give it your time, there are at least 1197 reasons to and if their lives aren’t enough, find one around your home—like the fact that you’re not speaking Japanese right now or any freedom you are currently taking for granted… Like the one I am right now by writing what I want.

                And then… Take a bath or sit in your hot tub or the shower too long. Look at your skin. Wrinkly, soft, sloughing a little. Imagine four days of exposure to salt water and having a canvas 1940’s life jacket rubbing you for four straight days—and that being the least of your issues. Ask yourself:

•       Could I stay alive for four days floating in the ocean with no food, water?
•     Of 900 people in the water, would I be one of the 300 to survive?
•     Am I afraid of insanity, hypothermia, murder?
•       Could I stand being picked alive by sharks like a turkey carcass on Thanksgiving?
•     Would I be the type of person to help others survive the same ordeal I’m trying to survive?

I won’t claim to answer those questions for myself and hope I never need to. This man can answer those questions, and in fact did as he survived. His story and the others were told at Kim Roller’s incredible presentation about the USS Indianapolis and its history and the survivors and families of the sailors. Go to her presentation. Learn about your history and what the individuals of yesterday and today do so that you can continue to …. Do.

               

                To finish up, watch this one minute video of George speaking and listen to how he ends it. Grace, Respect, Accurate, Acceptance: