Listening in on New Home Owner's is such fun!

Listening in on new homeowner’s is such fun. I don’t know, it’s such a different style of home than we’ve lived in before. I know, isn’t it wonderful! It’s a “gingerbread style”. Very chic and stylish. But that pointed roof... And it looks like it will be hot in the summer as well. But just look at all the gingerbread trim and fancy decorations! NO ONE else had anything like it! The front door seems overly small to me It’s sized just right for us, and a smaller door will help keep out “undesirables” I know but.... And it’s so CLEAN inside. Much nicer than the others we’ve looked at Won’t stay that way after we move in I’m certain we’re the first ones to see it, and you know how fast this market is moving I know, I know. But I really don’t like the view from the front door. It looks straight into the back of someone else’s home. It’s like they can watch our every move from their kitchen window True, but it has a large side and back yard. And will it be big enough when our little fledglings come? I’m certain it will be big enough for all of us. OK, I’ll talk to the management and sign the lease. Moving Day OOF! I can’t get this inside Try turning it sidewise. That small front door is really a problem now. It will be OK. Just finagle it a bit more. It will fit, you’ll see. Ah! Finally, it’s inside. See I told you so. OOF! Double OOF! Did you have to select such large pieces? Stop preening and come help me. It will be just fine. Just finagle it like you did the last time. Grumble Grumble, OK, it’s finally in. Isn’t it perfect!! I can’t wait to show it off to our friends! And so, Mr and Mrs Sparrow became my neighbors when they rented my newest birdhouse.

A Year Into the Pandemic of 2020-2021

As the pandemic drags on, I find that I am becoming more scatter-brained. I start one project, then walk into another room as I go to refresh my cup of tea and suddenly, I’m on a different project with my cup still cold and close to empty. Nothing seems to get finished. This Polar Vortex has made it worse. The wintery sky – so gray when I look out of the window. Even the birds seem to have lost their vibrant colors. This is NOT me. “ME” is attention oriented. “ME” is detail oriented. “ME” is focused. “ME” has checklists on top of checklists that are religiously checked and updated every evening before I go to bed, then crossed off as I get things done. “ME” accomplishes things. This “Other Person” is not “ME” and yet… When I do focus, it is for others. Clients. Friends. Making Masks. Projects that involve my doing for others. Then my focus sharpens and I accomplish things. I keep all the balls in the air at the same time and ensure that nothing drops, nothing is missed. But, when it is just me, my brain is “mushy”. What was it that I walked into this room to get? Where did I put….. What was it I wanted to tell Mike? Did I call Annette and tell her… what was it I was going to tell her? My focus is lost. The kitchen table covered with partially worked projects. Books for 4 different book discussion groups, plus a fifth book for the one I’m really reading right now. The dining room becoming a catchall when I need to clear the kitchen table. The living and dining rooms, still full of sewing supplies from making masks and boxes of things to be “rehomed”. Some days are better than others. Today the sun shone and the sky was bright blue. The snow and ice melted around the heated bird bath that had gotten encrusted with ice around the rim, from the extreme cold. My focus was better. Today I got things done. I crossed things off the list. But tomorrow, more snow is coming and the sky will be gray again and the bone chilling cold will keep me inside. Conversations with friends make me feel better. I’m not alone. Others have had the same issue since COVID has dragged on and on. It’s worse for those who are more isolated. Where things are delivered and they never leave home. “Buddy Checks” from friends, family and church help as they give people a chance to talk to others. Creating projects that are mentally stimulating help – writing blogs and family histories, taking online courses, projects that force them to use their brains to puzzle out solutions. But still it’s trying. At times my mind starts to wander and I wonder how the early explorers, trappers and pioneers who so often only saw other people a few times a year managed it. Oh, How I wish I could reset my brain to before COVID hit. When it was needle sharp and my focus was constant. When I could call a friend and meet up for lunch and a long stimulating chat. That day is coming.

East Berlin Trip

When we lived in Germany, I took every opportunity to travel. Sometimes with my husband and sons, sometimes with visiting relatives. Often though, I would go on the “Wive’s trips” set up for by Officer’s Wives Club or Mike's Squadron Wive’s Club (my unit had too few people in it to set up trip). The wives would go on shopping trips (often shopping at the factory outlet stores for china or crystal), or cooking classes. Sometimes we’d just go where it was difficult to go. Like when we went to Berlin. Germany was still divided then, into East and West with Berlin a divided city trapped in the middle. We went with plans to shop, sightsee and enjoy ourselves. Since I was active duty at the time, I had to get special permission to cross through the Eastern Sector to get to Berlin and then permission to enter East Berlin, as did the only other active duty wife on the trip. The civilian wives had to bring their passports and military ID’s but they didn’t have to have special permission documents. We started out that morning, driving from Ramstein AB to Frankfurt, doing our best to keep our caravan of cars together on the autobahn. By the time we reached Frankfurt, we were running late for processing in to catch the special British run train that would take us from Frankfurt across West Germany, then East into West Berlin. I helped park the cars, while others grabbed our documents and rushed into the train station to do the military paperwork required to get us on the train. The Brits knew how to live well and the train was very comfortable. Even with expecting it, it was still strange to have to pull the window blinds and not look outside as we traversed the Eastern Sector. After we finally arrived in West Berlin and got settled at Templehoff Air Base, we got our briefing on what we could and could not do in the city and when we crossed the border at Checkpoint Charlie to enter East Berlin. We were not supposed to engage in conversation with any of the East Berlin citizens, in particular we were to say absolutely nothing about military units, where we were stationed or what our spouses did. We were not under any circumstance to use the light rail trains to go from one section of the city to another. Like Cinderella, we had a curfew and had to be back on the Western side of the city. We were briefed on carrying our passports and for the two of us who were active duty, carrying our permission documents. That’s when I realized that the gal who did the paperwork hadn’t given me back my permission document. Then we discovered that she had accidently left it at the Frankfurt train station. Without it, I couldn’t enter East Berlin. There was nothing that could be done at that point, so the others left to start their visit of East Berlin, while I waited at Templehoff. Later that day, I was able to rejoin the group. I found them at a shopping area, where they stood in line with queues of East Germans purchasing Christmas decorations. While I bought a few things, mentally I was ashamed of myself. I was so affluent compared to the East Germans around me, that I really felt that I shouldn’t be purchasing items that were so obviously hard to get in their city. Regrouping later back at Templehoff, the group prepared for the night’s big entertainment. We were going back into the East side for a wonderful 5 course dinner at the fanciest hotel in East Berlin. This was the hotel where ruling heads of state stayed when they were being feted by the Communist regime and shown around that “plum” that was East Berlin (as compared to everything else in the Communist Bloc). This time we were going on a military bus with a military driver and a civilian tour guide assigned to us from Templehoff with us. The dinner was fabulous. Couse after course of outstanding food, excellent wines and excellent service. It truly was a showplace for the Communists to take dignitaries. Of course, one of the women did make the mistake of talking too much to the restroom attendant (for which she and her husband got to have a talk with his commander a few weeks later, when “intel” was received that she had passed military information to the attendant). And then there were a couple of women who had wanted to shop at a specific store and had followed the directions an East Berlin citizen gave them, which included riding the light rail train system. When the dinner ended, several hours later, the group was more than slightly inebriated. We had just enough time to get back through Checkpoint Charlie before we turned into pumpkins. Unfortunately, there was one slight problem..... While we were inside the Hotel having our dinner, several other busses had totally blocked in our bus and the driver couldn’t move it. The tour guide, bus driver and I searched the street looking for the driver to no avail. We went back into the hotel and asked for help, which they declined to give us. Finally, without any alternatives, we went back to the bus and rejoined the rest of the group while we pondered what to do next. In our absence, the other women had decided to start singing. Unfortunately, for the Airman who was driving the bus, they chose to sing the fighter pilot songs they had learned from their husbands. I watched the Airman’s back as he sat in the driver’s seat and his blushing went up his neck. As the women got rowdier and rowdier, their noise level increased. Finally, the hotel sent someone out to tell us that we were disturbing their guests and we needed to leave. We pointed out, once more that we couldn’t leave until the busses blocking us in moved out of the way. This time they decided to help us. It turned out that the bus driver was nearby smoking a cigarette and laughing to his colleagues about how he had trapped the American Military bus and its passengers. The hotel staff made him move his bus and we were finally on our way, the bus driver and the tour guide visibly relieved. Now, I hadn’t come all that way to miss the trip, so after the rest of the group headed over to the Eastern side, I paid a visit to the orderly room for the Templehoff Services Division (where I knew the Chief of Services). Telling them part of the truth, but not all of it, I explained that my permission doc had been left in Frankfurt by accident. I convinced them to give me a blank permission document, by telling them that the other active duty gal on the trip was from my orderly room and hence had permission to sign the form for me. OK, so a slight diversion from the truth, since she wasn’t in my unit and had no ability to sign the form. A quick trip to the bathroom (out of sight of prying eyes) and my form was filled out and signed and I had headed for the Eastern side of the city. When the group asked how I’d gotten the document replaced, I told them I’d gotten it from the orderly room, I just neglected to say it had been blank when I got it and they never questioned it. So I had ended up being on the wrong side of Checkpoint Charlie, after curfew, on a bus of drunken women where I was not only the ranking military member, but also the only one who was sober other than the bus driver (I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone on the trip that I was pregnant) and I was traveling on forged documents.... Luckily for me, while the bus driver and tour guide got “called in” the next day to explain what had transpired, the authorities didn’t bother to talk to any of the women in our group.

The Porsche

You really had to hand it to the flyboys, they had gotten it down to a science. First, they would present their wife with a gorgeous fur coat for her Birthday, their Anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or some other “special occasion”. Then would come the round of “date nights” to places where she would wear the coat. Then there would be that SIGH. You know sweetheart, it just doesn’t look right, as gorgeous as you look, taking you out in my old beat up (insert type of car the husband drove) rather than a chariot that matches your radiance. Sometimes they’d have to repeat the last line a few times, but typically it wouldn’t take long before they were out looking for that European Sports Car they were dreaming of. When the fever hit Mike, he was driving a Toyota mini-pickup truck with only 1 row of seats, so he added that his truck just wasn’t big enough for our family, since our second son had just been born. In his dreams, a Porsche 928 was just the ticket. After all that miniscule backseat that was too small for an adult, would be perfect for 2 little boys in their car seats, so it was a family car!! So he started looking. While I wasn’t actively looking, I actually came across one in Frankfort that I thought was perfect. Owned by a Porsche Dealers’ wife, it was not only US Specs, but California Emission Specs as well! Very well maintained (after all her husband was a dealer), low mileage (it wasn’t the only Porsche she owned). The only negative I could see was that someone had broken into the car once by breaking out the back window. While the window had been replaced, there was some staining on the leather interior from water damage that occurred before the window got replaced, but it was very minor damage. While I thought it was perfect, Mike decided it was too expensive, so instead one day he showed up with a “Gray” market Porsche that he had purchased off a GI in the area. With a Gray Market car, the car had been built to German specs, then over time had been “converted” to American specs. He justified the purchase by saying the one I had found was too expensive. Buying it without showing it to me first, he proudly drove up to the house and said he was going to take me for a ride! We didn’t even get a block away before he had to stop the car and let me out. The previous owner had been a heavy smoker and the residue in the car was making me sick. Painstakingly, Mike ended up taking the car’s interior apart and washing everything before I could ride in it. Not having had it checked out by a Porsche mechanic before he bought it, he decided that he ought to do that. (A lesson quickly learned was that only Porsche mechanics could work on a Porsche and those don’t come cheap). Picking up the car after it had been looked over (and finding out it had been in a couple accidents that the seller hadn’t mentioned to Mike and the VIN number indicated it was a year older then he was told the car was), Mike got in the Porsche to drive it home, with Brigham riding shotgun beside him. I was to follow in my car with Nathan. Backing out of the parking spot, Mike accidently put the Porsche in Drive and tapped the building. While neither the building or the car were damaged, with the whole family watching, Mike couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. At that point, I decided it was safe for me to drive it, since now, he’d had the first accident in it. Keeping up the “date nights”, one of the restaurants we loved to go to in Kaiserslautern, was a small Spanish restaurant. It not only had excellent food, but it had a very romantic atmosphere with private little candlelit alcove seating. One night, coming home very late from the restaurant in the Porsche, we stopped at a fairly deserted corner for a stoplight. As we sat there waiting for the light to change, a drunk started weaving her way across the street in front of us. She walked past the car, then right before the light changed, turned around and walked back, ending up right in front of us, when the light turned green. When Mike beeped the horn at her (a Porsche may look like a manly man’s car, but it’s horn is a tiny tinny little beep of a thing – more like the sound of a buzzing gnat than the honk of a goose). The woman looked around, and realized that something was beside her. She patted the hood. Then she laid down on the hood. Mike all the while beeping away at her. When the light changed to red, she finally got up and started to weave her way across the street again. Mike, breathing a sigh of relief, until she turned around and came back to lay back down on the hood right before the light changed again. Fit to be tied, Mike beeped the horn again, as it looked like she had passed out on the hood. Once more, she finally roused herself and started to move off as the light went red again, only to end up back on the hood when it went green. Finally, just as Mike was ready to get out of the car and try to talk to the drunk, (even though he wasn’t sure that she was coherent enough to understand him or what he should or even could do to get her to stay out of the street), a woman came out of a nearby apartment building, took the drunk by the arm and led her out of the street. As much as we wanted to get out of the car and thank our savior, we took the wiser course of getting out of there while we could. When we transferred back to the states, Mike brought the Porsche back with us to Miami, where we would sometimes drive the back roads in order to drive it as it wanted to be driven, since it really didn’t like American speed limits. The car really was lovely to drive. The only thing was, if you drove it, something seemed to go wrong. And if you let it sit in the garage, something seemed to go wrong. As a result, it spent a lot of time visiting its best friend, the Miami Porsche mechanic, who, because it was a “Gray Market” car, would have trouble getting parts for it. And of course, the parts would have to come from Germany which meant they took longer to get as well as costing more. Mike finally sold the Porsche before we transferred back to Germany. Before he told me how much the Porsche had cost us over the years we had owned it, he surprised me with a new Master Bedroom Suite of furniture.

The Box

The Box When we moved into our current home, it was a government move. On a government move, the movers have to unpack everything and damages have to be noted right away, or you can’t file a claim against the government. The movers unloaded our belongings, which had been in storage all summer long, then instead of unpacking, they got into their truck and sped away. We spent days on the phone called the Transportation Management Office (TMO) before they finally got the company back out – meanwhile unable to unpack so we could start organizing and putting things away. The day the movers finally showed back up, I had a contractor in the kitchen talking to Mike about necessary repairs to the home, the movers downstairs unpacking the boxes while I kept running up and down the stairs. I told the movers that the boxes filled with books and papers didn’t need to be unpacked, just stack them in the corner since there wouldn’t be any claimable damages from those items, but that the other boxes HAD to be unpacked and any damages immediately brought to my attention. Going back upstairs to check on what was happening in the kitchen, I saw the movers’ car zoom by the window. Going back downstairs, I discovered they had opened every box of papers and books and scattered them all over the basement floor – from one side to the other, the floor was covered. Calling TMO, we finally learned that that particular moving company had been on the base DO NOT USE list for the past 5 years and we were the lucky people to be the first to use them once they got put back on the Use List. By the time we finished our complaint they were on the Never Ever Ever Use List. Meanwhile, TMO finally gave us permission to unpack ourselves and record the damages. Since we moved in the day Mike officially retired, the boys started at their new school, we had a house full of boxes to unpack, organize and put away and we were both job hunting, the papers and books got shoved back in the boxes they had come out of and set on a storage shelf to be dealt with later. Over the years, the books gradually got put on shelves, but many of the papers – were just consigned to sit in boxes until we had time. It took about 20 years for that to happen. Pulling the boxes off the shelves to sort through, pitch and determine what should be kept, I found a box that must have come to me when my parents left Tennessee for California a few years after we moved in, but had, like the other boxes, not been dealt with right away. In my father’s handwriting, on the top of the box, were the words: ALTON MUSEUM. Nothing more. The box was filled with pictures and records about Alton, Illinois, that had been my honorary grandfather’s. When I was about 2nd grade, we had moved to St Louis when Dad got transferred to Scott AFB, but was assigned to McDonnell Aircraft Company as the Air Force’s Contracting Officer overseeing the planes that McDonnell was making for the Air Force. At the time, we rented a home on St Catherine Street in Florissant from Mr Wagenfeldt, an elderly (to me) gentleman. My mother talked for years about cringing on the couch, with the landlord sitting beside her, her young daughters showing Mr Wagenfeldt their new roller skates, as we skated across the living room floor and not knowing how to stop ran into one wall, then turned around and ran into the other wall! Mr Wagenfeldt just sat there and beamed at us. He took us to the Museum of Transportation, where he knew more about the trains then the people who worked there. He bought us foot tall solid chocolate Easter Bunnies. How could we not make him our Honorary Grandfather? I had probably been given instructions when I received the box with where it should go, but those were long forgotten. I knew though, that I had received a charge from my father and it was a task, I had to complete. I had to find the right Alton Museum and take this box to them. Googling Alton Museum, I found 2 possibilities. One the Alton Museum of History and Art, the other the Alton Historical Society’s museum. The Art and History Museum had a facebook page, but no website. The second had no contact info. It was late at night when I sent a facebook message to the first and tried to explain who I was and what I wanted: “When I was a little girl, living in St Louis, our landlord was an elderly gentleman who lived in Alton with his sister. Neither one ever married. After they died, my parents “inherited” some of their photographs and some other things. Herbert and Lucille Wagenfeldt grew up in Alton and always lived in the same home in Alton until the point they had to go into a nursing home. To give you an idea of the timeline of the items I have, They went to school with Robert Wadlow (the Alton giant) and attended the St Louis World’s Fair. Herbert died in the late 70’s I believe, while Lucile died in the mid 80’s. I have in turn inherited their box of memories from my parents. My father had labeled the box that it should be given to an Alton museum or historical society. While many of the pictures aren’t labeled, there are ones that were obviously taken in Alton. There is also a scrapbook of a trip Miss Wagenfeldt took with some other ladies from the Alton area to Colorado when she was a young adult. While I haven’t catalogued the pictures and other items to be able to send you any kind of a list, I am trying to find out if your organization might be interested in going through what I have, or if you know of an organization that might be interested in the pictures and other items. I live in West St Louis County, so I would be able to bring the box of items to Alton” Not expecting to hear anything back for several days, I was astounded when I got a message back that night. “Hello Mrs. Weir. Mr. Wagenfeldt's picture hangs in our foyer to this day. If you can believe that. Good people they were. Most certainly and please, of course we would be interested. You could consider this the only home for that kind of personal material. We would be honored to see it. “ A few weeks later, I took the box over to Alton and met the young man who managed the museum. He told me how Mr Wagenfeldt and his friends had founded the museum years earlier. How many of the dioramas still on display at the museum had been built by Mr Wagenfeldt. Going through a few of the things in the box with him, he was astounded by the pictures that Mr Wagenfeldt had taken of Alton years earlier when home cameras were first introduced. Since that time, I have shared other items I have come across that related to the Wagenfeldts with the museum, glad that I found the RIGHT home for the items and that I had been able to fulfill the charge my father had left me with so many years earlier.  

New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve I didn’t know. I really didn’t. I suppose in retrospect, that I had never thought to ask the question, or even to think the question. The first few years, dating, we were either with family, or working. The first year we were married we were working waiting to be called to active duty with the military. Only the 2nd year, when we got to our first duty station, did it come up and I learned the truth. I had married a man who had NEVER celebrated New Year’s Eve and who now, saw no reason to start. I cajoled, I coaxed, I tried everything, before he gave in. BUT. We were in Montana, where there really wasn’t any place to go to celebrate the New Year’s arrival. Literally, the big “to-do” in Great Falls, was to go to the restaurant at the small regional airport on Fridays when Fresh Fish was flown in from the coast for a seafood buffet and New Year’s Eve wasn’t on a Friday. We finally agreed to dinner at a restaurant followed by a movie. Dinner went well. The movie went well. Then out we went into the cold cold snowy world that is Montana in December. To a car that didn’t start. We tried and tried, but nothing. We went back to the movie theater, which was locking up for the night, and tried calling for a tow truck. BUT, it seemed that tow trucks didn’t run on New Year’s Eve in Great Falls. The manager of the movie theater, wanting to close, suggested a taxi. So we called, then waited, then took a taxi home on that cold winter’s night. The next day, bright and early, we called for a tow truck from home (cell phones not being in existence back then). Now the tow trucks were running, but we weren’t the only ones who had need of their services, so we took the other car and went back to the theater- and to the car and waited. Bored, with a long wait ahead of us, we tried the car again. Still the car wouldn’t start. Finally, as he lifted the lid to check the engine and battery, I was directed, by my husband, to get in and try starting the car. “Sweetheart, doesn’t the car have to be in park or neutral to start it?” I asked. For many years after that, he was accused of doing it on purpose. So that I wouldn’t, ever again, ask to be taken out on New Year’s Eve. For many years his strategy failed. (He even volunteered to be on Nuclear Alert one year, only to have the Wing Commander make the Officer's Club an alternate duty station for the evening....). Now, 43 years after that cold New Year’s Eve, we both often agree to a nice early dinner out, then home to watch a movie and drink champagne at midnight. Content to watch the bustle of the crowd on TV rather than in person.

Scuba Diving MisAdventures

Scuba Diving MisAdventures Mike and I took scuba diving classes when we were in college at MIZZOU. But other than the university pool, the only “real” diving we got to do was in a muddy lake where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Years later, stationed at Homestead AFB, in Miami, Florida, we decided to take it up again. Mike did very well at it. I had some misadventures. Now, while I like scuba diving, I don’t like snorkeling and trying to keep water out of my snorkel. One day, when I was in the water, watching the fish with my snorkel on, Mike came over and IN THE WATER, tried to move my snorkel from one side of my face to the other, because in his mind, I had it on wrong. I was NOT a happy camper with his doing that. Then there was the dive where the Captain took the boat out in choppy waters and I was so seasick, I never got in the water. In fact, Mike found me huddled against the anchor rope at one point, unable to stand up. It wasn’t helped by the crew on the boat cooking fish right in front of me and making fun of all the people on the boat who were sick. One time, early on, we went out on a boat with a large number of people. When we got to the bottom, Mike started leading the way. Suddenly, I had no air. Mike was too far away for me to get his attention. Gasping and flailing, I surfaced. Luckily, others on the boat saw me and pulled me out of the water. Turned out my regulator was broken and while it had registered that I had air in the tank, the tank was empty. It was about 5-10 minutes later, when Mike finally realized I wasn’t following him and surfaced. The female boat captain read him the riot act. You NEVER leave your dive buddy! You ALWAYS constantly check on your dive buddy! You should have caught the problem while she was on the bottom and shared your air with her! Then there was the time where the base veterinarian, his wife, the flight surgeon, Mike and I went out diving. I couldn’t get my ears to clear. I was miserable and tried everything, but they just wouldn’t clear. The next day, still having problems with them, I got an appointment with the flight surgeon. He took one look at my ears and realized I had gotten a hematoma on both ear drums trying to clear them. He was beside himself, realizing that he had been there when it happened and hadn’t realized what was happening to me. The kicker though, was when we went night diving. Now Mike and the base veterinarian had gotten their night certification dive out of the way the week before, but for one reason or another, the veterinarian’s wife and I hadn’t gotten ours done, so the four of us were going out with another of the flyers who was a certified dive instructor so the women could get their night certification, after which the guys planned on spear fishing. At the last minute, another dive instructor had asked if we’d take one of his students along who needed to get his night certification dive done. Excited and happy, we headed out. Reaching our destination, we anchored and everyone geared up. Mike was assigned to stay on the boat (one person always remains onboard in case of trouble), but the rest of us were going down. I was the last to go down. Jumping off the boat at the back, I needed to make my way forward under the boat to the bowline, then follow it down to where the rest were waiting. I couldn’t get down. I tried everything, but couldn’t reach the bow line to follow it down in the strong current and I couldn’t get below the current. After I returned to the boat, Mike put on his gear to help me get to the bowline, then he was headed back to the boat as the safety person. I struggled to reach the bowline, going under the boat, between all the spear guns that were hanging over the side, with Mike following me. Just as I started to put my hand out to grab the bow line, I felt Mike tap me on my shoulder. Turning to face him rather than grabbing the bowline, I saw he was handing me his air tank? That can’t be right. Then I realized it was my tank. As I swam under the boat, one of the spear guns had popped open the buckle on the band that held my tank on my back. Realizing that I was now connected to my tank ONLY by the regulator in my mouth and it’s hose, I grabbed the tank with both arms. And started to float away in the current. Mike, said later that his thought was if he didn’t stay with me, and I didn’t make it, he’d never forgive himself, and if he didn’t follow me and I survived, I’d never forgive him, he chose to follow where I was drifting and try to stop me. At this point, we were behind the boat and desperately trying to find the anchor line. Knowing if we missed it, we'd end up dead. Floating in the current to Who knows Where. Knowing that with no one on the boat, the rest of the group, when they surfaced, would have absolutely no idea what happened or where to look for us. Finally we made it. Reaching the anchor line, I pulled myself, inch by inch up it, still holding tight to the tank with both arms. Exhausted, Mike got on the boat and pulled me up (still holding my tank) and we collapsed on the deck. What seemed the strangest to us, was that no one from the party who had gone down earlier had surfaced looking for me, when I didn’t show up on the bottom. We found out why a few minutes later, when the rest of the group surfaced, dragging the guy from the other dive instructor’s class between them. They had gotten to the bottom and the guy had freaked out. The rest of the group, had had to take turns holding him “down” and force sharing their oxygen with him. We hauled them up onto the boat and they joined us just sitting for a bit. Then the dive instructor said, “I’m really sorry about this, but if the gals want to get their night certification, I need to take them back to the bottom and go through the certification skills with them so they can show their proficiency at diving at night”. The husbands came unglued and pointed out that based on what each of us had just gone through, we shouldn’t have to go down again. We compromised. Mike and the base Vet stayed with the freaked out diver and the 2 women went back down with the dive instructor (this time we adjusted my weight belt and I got down). We showed that we knew how to clear our masks in the dark at the bottom. Then went back to the boat and collapsed again. As we headed back to shore, Mike asked me why I kept scuba diving since I seldom had a great dive. “Because you asked me to”