My grown son, my eldest, is a SCUBA diver of sorts – which is to say he knows how and has gotten his certification, and gone on more than a few trips, but he has few opportunities to dive where we live because the mighty North Atlantic is murky and cold, and, I’ll say it, frightening at the best of times. (I should add, I also am a certified open-water diver, but the gear necessary for SCUBA is a big disincentive to me; I love the water but prefer to snorkel. I do that only in tropical places where you can see down to the bottom and thus avoid the dire touch of something scary or disgusting scraping your leg in the darkness. Which is all to say I don’t do this much either, since my financial and existential ability to travel to tropical destinations is nearly non-existent. But it wasn’t always.
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