“Super Bowl Sunday”

The dive shop called in sick today, the lot of us snuck off to Water Cay. The Salva Vida did not have her engines at 100% so we took two dorys. I along with 23 others were on Hermans boat, it looked as if we were taking the nighttime cruise from Cuba to Florida.

We passed Pigeon Cay. Some say that this small sleepy Cay of old fishermen, living in old shacks and houses packed so tightly together has more millionaires per capita than anywhere else on this blue and green earth. This being attributed to their luck in fishing for square grouper.

We arrived on Water Cay and promptly set up camp. Drinks were concocted and food ingested. The slack line was set up for all those who enjoy frustration. Soon the tropical rain arrived, while some took shelter around the coconut bark fueled fire, tropically shivering, Herr Osterich was enjoying his first game of baseball. All the way up until when the wet grip of a small bat turned it into a throat seeking missile. I turned as Osterich fell to the ground unconscious. This allowed for some practical EFR training. After a good amount of fumbling he was strapped down to a boogie board with weight belts and shivering he was sent sailing for the main(is)land.

Afterwards we set about wandering the island, playing with fire, trying to break language barriers and breaking open shells to get out what I truly hope were almonds.

I went to sleep that night as mentally fresh as one can be, laying alone on a table on the end of the dive shops dock looking at the stars, imaging what they must look like beyond the peaks of the Gracias a Dios, where no human lumens penetrate.

I thought about the college I would have been otherwise enveloped in at that moment. I thought about the professors and students who thought they really knew something. It wasn’t how to save lives or grow food or create machinery or even make contributions to any type of math or science. Still their egos grew fat off of mass delusion and towered over the studious innocents. I wrote this for them.

Being smart is realizing you know nothing.

Being intelligent is using the nothing you know to do something.

Being an intellectual is saying everything without knowing or doing anything.