Risky Behavior

Over the course of my lifetime I have often been a party to events that Sandy Kay often describes as dangerous behavior. She feels that there is a thin line between thrill seeking and utter stupidity, and is often confounded when I apparently cannot differentiate between the two. I cannot pass any opportunity to buy rides on Helicopters, and I will drive for miles out of my way to jump in a Bell Jet Ranger for the thrill of having my entire body vibrated for whatever the length of the ride.Sandy Kay only asks for the keys because she seems to have a vision of the whirly bird crashing and burning into a hillside with her husband melted into the fusilage, along with whoever else was foolhardy enough to fly. It doesn't help the cause that one of my favorite pilots crashed and burned , and was horribly disfigured. As long as she has the keys she knows she can drive home and continue with her life. I tried to get her to go para-sailing with me down at Panama City and she just held out her hands for the keys and said"Go for it!". There's something indescribable about floating 300 feet above the beach and hearing only the wind as you glide out over the Gulf of Mexico on a beautiful cloudless day. A few days later a parasailing mother and daughter were blown into a billboard as the parasail was caught in a freak burst of wind. Sandy watched the rescue squad take them away and only shook her head. A lot of people are afraid of sharks and are terrified that the boat will dip them into the waters of the Gulf right atop a hungry great white. Tim and I , on the other hand have dived with Caribbean Reef Sharks doing figure eights all around us thinking we will feed them. Now these are certainly not great whites but there were 5 or 6 of them in the school and they were 5 or 6 feet long, and have no fear of two middle aged out-of-shape men. As they glided by within a foot of us their black cat looking eyes would be turning at us and sizing us up as to our potential as a snack. It seemed as if their big toothy grins were saying,"You silly boys should have listened to Sandy Kay who's up on the bank clutching your wallets and the room keys!"Then there was the time when we elected to pay money and dived Sting Ray City in the Caymans with a gozillion Stingrays looking for squid handouts. These big monsters hear the boat engines and come flopping their black fins toward you much like birds of prey swimming under water. They are often four feet across their backs and will settle on your head like some obscene overstuffed hat that Aunt Ruby wore at Easter in the fifties. You can see their mouths on the white belly as they are sucking the squid that you have been given to keep them on site . A curious fact is that the mouths have been designed by nature to vacuum shellfish and food out of the sandy bottom , and these creatures have far more suction than David Orick ever dreamed of in his life time. The boat captain warned us of Sting Ray Hickeys and fortunately we survived. The only near danger we had was this monster barracuda somehow attached itself to Tim, often looking straight into his mask.I personally think that this multi-toothed creature sensed that Tim was the pharmacy guru and needed some recreational drug therapy. I could have told him(her?) that big old ugly fish wouldn't be given anything but ibuprofen or a rap on it's ugly killing snout by Dr. Tim.I might add that the bellies of stingrays feel like sleek white marshmellows under water as they glide across your exposed flesh, a fact that makes Sandy shudder when I tell her. I almost thought that she was going to swim with the manatees at Crystal River in Florida , but she rode on the boat and watched from above as old Tim and I snorkled out and swam amongst these gentle creatures . Nothing prepares you for how huge these things are as they graze underwater on aquatic plant life, often with a young baby at their sides. Being mammals , the manatees must surface for air often ito the props of overhead boats. Most of these creatures have horrible scars on their backs with collisions from boats. It is truly amazing that these animals can weigh 1000 pounds and are as graceful as dolphins . I was really proud of Sandy as she leaned over the edge of the boat , watching us swim with the mammals, our billfolds and keys carefully tucked in her purse. I have to admit that I'm not to squimish about danger, as I always drive too fast and like thrills, but the sight of a baby coming toward me picking his nose will cause me to overload. I cannot stand nose-picking children and I have a phobia about them rubbing Buggers on me. Sandy , on the other hand doesn't seem to have this phobia, mainly because the little devils always seem to come toward me. I also cannot bear the mechanics of diaper changing either, so I guess Sandy and I are a good team. Whenever Nose-picking kids come around I hold out my hands and she gives me the keys to guard. I can dive down in utter blackness to a lake bottom and grope around in 12 inches of slimy, cold mud, but you let a two year old bugger picker within a mile of me and I'll generally panic . It takes all kinds. "You got fins to the left and fins to the right and you're the only bait in town"