top 5 things I'll burn in hell for - #3

Next in the top 5 series of crap I'll burn in hell for... I now come clean on #3:

I almost killed a friend of mine.

Mike, wherever you are now bro... your tank didn't malfunction. That was actually me.

About 10,000 years ago I got really heavy into SCUBA diving while living in Okinawa, Japan. As anyone who has strapped on a BCD and a regulator before knows, the most important thing is your dive buddy. Mine was Mike, Mike was in the Navy but I still hung out with him because he worked in communications and I enjoyed trying to get him to tell me secret shit (he never did but he gave me plenty of hints).

Mike and I were preparing to dive a place called the Toilet Bowl. Yea, I know. Crappy name but it was a great place to dive because the entry and exit was so difficult it was rare to see many other divers there.

One of the steps in preparing for a dive is to do a safety check on each other, check the regulators, the tanks, the consoles... just another pair of eyes looking everything over. While I was checking his tank... I turned it off.

Let me say that again. I turned his damn tank the f$ck off.

I see you looking at me like that, in my defense it was a long walk to the entry point and we always did another safety check before making the leap. I thought I'd catch it on the next stop and give him shit about how he left his tank off. Man, that would be so cool...

Sometimes the smartass in me escapes the little box I keep it locked in and does crap I can't be held accountable for.

Well, remember when I said it was such a great dive spot because the entry was hard? Not only was it hard to get to, you had to judge the swell and jump in just at the right moment to ride the wave down about 15-20 feet. As we are walking to the entry point we got separated and to be honest I kinda forgot about the tank deal since I was concentrating on staying upright while walking across the coral. Mike gets there first and without hesitation he judges the swell and leaps into the water - straight to the bottom... with zero air.

It was then I found out it's possible to crap in a wetsuit.

I ran and jumped in right after him and got his tank turned back on. You should have seen the look on his face by that point, utter confusion and totally pissed off. We both came to the surface and the first thing he does after ripping off his mask is to start screaming about the quality of the tanks we had rented. I guess he didn't notice I had crapped my suit.

I never told him what actually happened that day. I'm sure to this day he thinks those crappy tanks went out on him right as he jumped. I shook uncontrollably for a week.

Temperature increase for jacking with my buddy's tank - an additional 25K degrees and a kerosene bath.

Tomorrow's top 5: #2 - the time I burned down a neighborhood.

They won't let you jump in with a dead tank over at HumorBloggers.com, check 'em out. They would love to go down with ya.