Sticker Shock
Today a chapter of my life ended.
For the past 20 years there has been a sticker on the rear door of my Ford Explorer—an image of a Great White shark in the red and white colors of the North American scuba diving flag. I put it there shortly after I moved to California and learned to dive.
Diving was a huge part of my life during the decade I lived in California. I eventually became an instructor, and most weekends were spent either in the classroom pool or taking students on certification dives in Monterey. I also led dive trips for a queer scuba diving club, taking groups to locations including the Galapagos Islands, Alaska, Saba, and Cozumel. The Explorer hauled my gear to and from every class and local dive. As we shared our dive spots with the local Great White population, the sticker symbolized several things to me: home, the natural world, community.
The day I left San Francisco, I gave both my drysuit and my air tanks to my dive buddy and frequent co-instructor Vince, telling him I’d be back for them at some point. The rest of my gear was in three plastic tubs. That gear has remained in those tubs, unopened, ever since. Those tubs have sat in garages in Texas, Delaware, Maryland, and now Ohio. And I never have gone back for my drysuit or tanks. Vince recently told me that the suit, which he used for students, finally fell apart. The tanks could be anywhere, mingled in with the others Vince uses in his business.
At first, I left the shark sticker on the Explorer because I really did think I would make it back to California someday. Then I left it on because it made it easy to identify my fairly common model Explorer in parking lots. Every time I saw it, I thought, “You really need to get back in the water soon.”
Over time, the sticker faded. Still, I left it on. But eventually seeing it stopped making me think fondly of time spent under the water and started making me worry that getting there would never happen again. I suspected that a lot of the gear in the tubs had probably begun to rot or corrode, but I couldn’t bring myself to check. As long as it was in the tubs, I could convince myself that one day I would take it out again.
Now I live in Ohio, where scuba diving is not exactly an everyday activity. While I could plan trips specifically to go diving again, those are expensive and difficult to schedule. Plus, I would need to purchase a bunch of new gear. So, despite periodic calls from Vince (who still teaches and leads trips) to join him on an outing, I haven’t done it.
Which brings us to this morning. While unloading groceries, I once again looked at the Great White sticker on the back door. This time, it made me both a little sad and a little embarrassed. “You haven’t been diving in 12 years,” I told myself. “This is like those guys who still wear their sports jerseys even though they haven’t been on a field since high school.”
I got a razor blade and scraped the shark off. While in some ways it felt like erasing a piece of history, it also felt like making a new start. I’m not the guy who lives in California and teaches diving anymore. I haven’t been that guy for a long time. It was time to let him go.
My favorite place to scuba dive has always been British Columbia and Alaska. We went every year, on a boat owned and operated by a good friend. One year, one of the other guests was a noted underwater biologist and photographer whose books I had in my library. He was in his 70s at the time and was there to photograph creatures for a new book.
After one particularly wonderful dive, this man came up excited to have seen and photographed a rarely seen tiny fish called, hilariously, the sarcastic fringehead. After showing us the photos, he began to pack up his equipment. As we were only on the fourth or fifth day of a week-long trip, we asked him why.
“That was my last dive,” he said. “Ever. It’s getting harder and harder for me to dive in cold water. I came here knowing one of the dives would be my last one. That one was perfect, so that’s it.”
I remember being horrified by this. Now, I understand. I can’t recall my last dive before leaving California. Had I known it would be my last one, I would have paid more attention. Instead, it was just another dive.
I’m not giving up entirely on the possibility of getting wet again. And I still can’t bring myself to open those tubs and see what’s happened to the gear inside. But I do feel like I’ve moved on in a small but important way. Removing the sticker that so much represented who I was feels like a way to make room for the person I’ve yet to become.
Now, I need to figure out what sticker he wants. ▼
Michael Thomas Ford is a much-published Lambda Literary award-winning author. Visit Michael at michaelthomasford.com.