ANOTHER DIP-IN-THE-DRINK DAY
This one happened in the Galapagos. It was 6:30 am in Black Tuttle Cove and our rubber-raft panga was making no noise as our guide poled us expertly and silently through the mangrove lagoons.
Suddenly I looked down and saw four huge White-Tipped Reef sharks sleeping on the beige sand about three feet below our raft. OK,
I confess, dear readers, that reef sharks are usually only about five feet in length, but to me any shark is huge!
The sharks did not wake up as we started gliding silently over them, but my heart let me know it was alive and ticking. Unfortunately, all the blood seemed to have drained out of my brain then because found my elbow shooting out in a quick reflex jabbing Myrtle sitting next to me.
Predictably, my dear Myrtle had to look down also and immediately leaped up from her seat and shrieked in high panting decibels as she started wind-milling her way down the raft in the direction away from where she had seen the sharks. These surprisingly graceless and lumbering moves from so petite a woman caused impressive havoc. Our raft mates howled and yelled in protest as their feet were stepped on and their shins bruised.
Finally, Myrtle’s forward momentum threw her off balance enough to land her in the lap of a man near the rear of the raft.
She clutched his neck and clung to him, all of which surprised him sufficiently that he sprang up, thereby upsetting the balance of the raft and causing the punter, or whatever we should call the man who was poling us forward, to throw himself onto the other side of the raft hard enough that he went right over into the water.
However, luckily for us his quick action dislodged Myrtle from the neck of the other man, and she landed with a thud in the bottom of the raft, thereby righting it.
We did not capsize, and there were no casualties.
Our small group then erupted into a cacophony of exclamations and some choice swear words that Miss Manners would certainly not approve; and the men among us started throwing out all these ideas about how to get the punter back into the raft. I heard phrases like ballast, balance, chain gang, tug-of-war (Tug of war?!)
Seeing that this whole situation might quickly get out of hand, I glanced down to scope out the exact location of those sharks in case I should be next in the drink, and I gripped my piece of raft rope so hard I nearly cut my hand.
The punter himself, with a charming look of incredulity on his face, had meanwhile grabbed a raft rope and pulled the panga to the stand of mangroves we were passing, where in one fluid motion he propped one bare foot on a sturdy mangrove root and propelled himself expertly back into the panga, missing Myrtle by inches and thereby arousing another impressive shriek from her.
By that time, of course, the sharks were long gone, as well as all the bird sounds we had heard in the mangroves; and we all sat in the sudden silence like guilty children waiting for the teacher’s reprimand.
I noticed with some surprise that our guide did not react. Inexplicably, she seemed to be lost in a deep reverie observing some invisible action in the mangroves, totally speechless.
Now that I look back on this strange behavior, dear reader, do you think maybe she was trying to remember whatever in the world possessed her to take on a job like this with crazy gringos as passengers? Well, if that is the case, I can tell you with certainty: it was the money of course. But maybe at this moment poverty did not seem so bad?
The punter righted his pole and pushed us back out into the center of the mangrove channel, and we resumed our tour.
That evening Myrtle totally got herself back into the good graces of the group. It is so unfair, honestly! She can cause the most horrendous trouble and completely get away with it just because she is Myrtle.
During our time in the Galapagos, we were living on a boat, traveling from island to island.
That night was the night the cook had offered to teach us the Merengue dance after dinner.
The waiters and busboys cleared the dining room of tables and set the chairs along the walls, inviting us to take seats.
The cook asked for a volunteer, and Myrtle’s hand shot right up. In seconds she was in the correct starting position next to him, which seemed to surprise him a little since he thought we were all unfamiliar with the Merengue.
Unknown to him, or anyone but me, the Merengue happens to be Myrtle’s favorite Latin dance.
The cook took her in his arms as the dishwasher put a CD into the boom box and turned up the volume.
Then the room exploded into a flurry of motion.
Myrtle’s little behind started flipping back and forth like a demented metronome on steroids.
The startled cook lost his hold for a minute, but quickly made up for his embarrassment by grabbing her wildly and smashing her little body up tight against his.
Then the two of them really burned up that floor, my dear readers. Aie yai yai!! Oooh la la! Mama Mia and Ai Caramba! And all that other stuff.
Their behinds went side to side, tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tick-tick-tock faster and faster, higher and higher as the two spun and flew across that room, a look of absolute ecstasy on the cook’s face. Myrtl was smushed so tightly against him that I could not see her face, but since she just kept going and going I guessed that she could breathe OK.
The rest of us bolted out of our chairs and started clapping and stomping and yelling, and there was a moment, dear reader, when my little old heart went pittypat so hard I had to hold on to the man next to me.
But he could not take advantage of his good fortune because he was feverishly patting his brow and breathing heavily. I worried a bit that he was having a heart attack, to tell you the truth.
I also worried that we might stomp so hard we would smash right through that floor and end up in the cold Pacific again, which might have been a good thing, come to think of it, to cool us down.
Eventually that record came to an end, and as we all collapsed back into our chairs laughing hysterically, I noticed the cook giving Myrtle a kiss so passionate that the sparks were flying.
Myrtle did not seem to mind.
She finally returned to my side with stars in her eyes and such a dreamy expression on her face that I would not have been surprised had she self-combusted right in front of me! All she could say was, “Oh Jo-Jo, I am so totally totally in love, just so totally totally in LOVE!”
To tell you the truth, that’s all I could get out of her for the rest of the evening. I had to remind myself that love was in the air in the Galapagos right then because it was mating season.
To be continued…