My Issues with Snorkeling

One thing I was able to do in Hawaii before heat rashing it up was snorkeling.

I found snorkeling to be rather difficult, although I doubt most snorkelers find this to be the case. When you take a simple, natural activity like breathing and ask me to switch it up a little bit, I, excuse the pun, flounder. I honestly can't walk and chew gum at the same time, though that has everything to do with the fact that I'm not supposed to chew gum due to my jaw problem. But if you'll recall, I also had great difficulty figuring out how to walk and hold sticks at the same time while nordic walking, so I'm not the most coordinated fellow.

To my knowledge, I don't have trouble breathing normally, but add a tube into the mix, and I am perplexed. It wasn't that I was scared, just that my inclination was to keep breathing with my nose, so I had to constantly remind myself to breathe with my mouth in order to stay alive and submerged. When a pretty fish would swim by, I would become distracted and start reflexively breathing with my nose again until I recognized the oxygen deprivation and had to internally yell, "Mouth, Kevin! Mouth!" Snorkeling: surprisingly hard for a dolt like me.

So while that seems like a deal-breaker, that wasn't even my biggest problem with snorkeling! You see, my favorite thing to do in the ocean is urinating. It's both liberating and warming; unlike at a public pool, there are no chemicals to rat you out for relieving yourself. In a snorkeling environment, however, this act was essentially impossible. At any given point, there were a handful of people around me with high-vision snorkel masks that would be able to detect my tinkle torrent.

Repeatedly, I tried to swim to a secluded area where I could pee in private, but then some dumb awesome-looking fish would meander my way and a couple of people would follow. Finally, I found a spot with enough of a buffer between other snorkelers and myself. As I prepared to piss, I noticed a pair of fish beneath me and became shy. It's like when you're naked in the shower and you see a bug on the wall and become self-conscious. "What are you looking at?" After a momentary pause, I got over it and urinated, because like the bugs, I'm pretty sure fish can keep a secret. Plus, I have a pretty good idea of where they use the restroom as well.