See no evil, hear no evil, tell dad bloody nuthin

Contributed by BAT

As most of you know I am an instructor and we teach open water students the basics in confined water. Well I, along with a lot of others, utilize the local pool before going to the bay for the open water component. My little adventure takes place during one of those pool sessions.

I am lucky enough to be a single parent with the custody of 3 wonderful boys. When I teach the pool sessions the boys come along and assist me with the loading/unloading of the equipment. While I am teaching they usually have a swim.

At the conclusion of an un-eventful class I noticed that the students were paying attention to something going on behind me. I casually looked around and two of my young boys had slipped into a couple of the SCUBA units that had been placed at the edge of the pool. Just as I looked around they pushed off and into the water. Well with the weight of the units, they just headed for the bottom and sat there. I put my reg in my mouth and knelt down to see what was going to happen next.

Anyway, with a little effort they righted themselves and were off and commenced doing small laps of the pool. All the students were in fits of laughter as they swam circuits and couldn't believe their eyes when Jack ( the middle aged one ) ran out of air, dropped his rig onto the bottom of the pool, swam over to his brother, grabbed his occy and started swimming laps with him. I might add, unbeknown to him. He just grabbed the free hanging reg, put it in his mouth, cleared it and swam above his brother trying for all his might to get below the surface. I was grinning from ear to ear.

Next there was a loud metallic clunk behind me. Bloody hell!! It scared the shit out of me. I stood up to see what the noise was and couldn't see anything. Well, not above the water anyway. Darcy, the youngest, had strapped on a unit, jumped in and was now like a turtle on his back on the bottom of the pool! I put my head back under the water and looked to see what he was up to. Well I have never seen anything so funny, the tank was on the bottom and arms and legs were waving from out of the BCD like one of Dr Who's 'darleks'. I laughed so much, I choked on a mouthful of water. I cleared my reg and continued to watch in amazement as he turned himself over and got the tank settled in the middle of his back and off he went. As the students gradually packed up all their gear I kept an eye on the boys to make sure they were all right. They got out of the pool and broke down their equipment like they have been taught and then hit the showers.

While I was taking my shower I could hear a lot of giggling from the cubicle next to mine. They thought that this scuba stuff was easy and next time they were at the beach they were going to get Dad to take them out in the ocean. After all, they already had their skills down pat, so how could he say no?