Paulie (from the Sopranos) goes diving

By Arty Skye aka. Sawtooth

First of all, I gotta tell ya, you divers ain't such a smart bunch. If man was meant to swim in the ocean, we'd have scales, right? But we don't.
Let me tell my story here, and you decide if you think I'm right about protecting us divers from the crazies .

I gotta job to do down in the Carribean. Can't go into details. Suffice it to say I finish the job early, and I have a half of day to myself before hopping back on the plane. I see some guy down by the pool giving free deep sea diving lessons-so I decide to check it out. How hard could it be? Stick the thing in your mouth and breath. Easy. I'm just a little ascared of meeting some man eating sharks or giant octopussys, but I figure I could also find some sunken treasure so what the %$#@.

So we go out on the boat, and this is where it starts getting weird. We're all sitting around the boat making small talk, and this guy starts telling me he's on the boat alone and could we be buddies? I figure the guys lonely, so I says 'sure, we're regular pals'. He tells me he's Patty A.O.W. I tell him I'm Paulie V., and then he tells me he's Henry. What? I'm figuring this Patty or Henry is a little schizo now.

So I finish getting dressed, put my tank and lifevest on, and Patty comes up to me and starts sizing up my equipment. He's looking my stuff over and touching things. I told him 'hey, back off pal, it's rented, you can take the stuff if I don't make it back alive'. He laughs and starts showing me his stuff, like maybe he wants to trade or something. I figure I got the better stuff.

So we all start jumping in the water. I'm on the surface, and everyones giving me the thumbs down. Alright, maybe I ain't so graceful jumping in, but I didn't think I'd get rated on it. Now the guy from the pool comes over and presses this button on my lifevest and I begin to sink. I keep wondering when I'm gonna reach the bottom, and then finally I feel it. Baddah bing, I'm standing in this garden and the pool guy comes over again and starts trying to play with my life vest again. Hey, if he got it right the first time, he wouldn't have to keep playing with it. So I smack his hand away when he touches it this time. Maybe he got pissed off because he swam away with the other divers. I figure I'll walk around a bit by the sunken ship and see if there's any treasure. I keep an eye out for the sharks who might be guarding it, sort of like watchdogs.

The flippers are protecting my feet, but maron, they're hard to walk in. I start walking down this hill, and my pal keeps following me. A few minutes later, he comes over to me and makes an obscene gesture with his hand, making a circle with his fingers like he's stroking the meat. What's with this Patty guy I'm thinking. He keeps doing it, so finally I flash him the bird, y'know, middle finger. I keep walking down the hill. Now he starts showing me his equipment again, and he's putting five fingers up at me. Hey, that's the evil eye in Arab. So I give him the moloquio-the horns-(first finger and pinky) for protection against him. He's pointing to my dials now so oh yeah, check for air. It says that I have 65 meters of air left, so what's the rush? Now he starts again with the thumbs up, so I guess I did it right, whatever it was. Now he gives me the peace sign, so I give it back. Fine, we're pals again.

But this Patty was schizo or something, because the next thing he does is make a chopping gesture across his neck, like all of a sudden he wants to wack me, and then he starts lunging for me. So I punched him one in the head, and backed away. I had enough of this by then, and besides, my ears have been killing me so I decided it was time to go. No treasure anyway. So I inflated my life vest and floated to the surface. It sure took the boat long enough to come and get me. They asked me if I had seen my pal, buddy, whatever, and I said no, he went the other way. I figured I didn't need to be connected to this guy, even though I was in the right. My flight was later that afternoon and I was happy to leave.

I think you divers need to have a deep sea divers organization or something to protect divers like me from dangerous guys like this Patty. I coulda gotten hurt.

And honestly, I don't see what the whole fuss is about. I didn't find no treasure, no giant octopussys, and plus, you can get eaten by man eating sharks. I saw some pretty fish, but I can go to the petstore for that.
Jeesh, now my joints are aching from all that water seeping into my bones. I must have caught a cold.

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