The Four Instructors

The Setting: Corner booth of a dive bar on some tropical island. Four tanned dive instructors raise their glasses in a toast.
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PADDY: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

PATTY: Nothing like a round of irish carbombs at the end of a charter, ay Pat?

PAT: You're right there Paddy.

PATSY: Who'd a thought when we were studying for the IE we’d make it here, teaching divers, living the dream, buying rounds of irish carbombs?

PADDY: Yeah. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a carbomb.

PATTY: A warm carbomb.

PATSY: Without bailey’s or whiskey.

PAT: OR beer!

PADDY: In a filthy, cracked mug.

PATSY: We never used to have a mug. We used to have to drink out of a customer’s used paper cone cup.

PATTY: The best WE could manage was to suck on a corner of a beer-soaked bar rag.

PAT: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were just tank monkeys.

PADDY: Yeah. BECAUSE we were just tank monkeys. My old Course Director used to say to me, 'Certifications don’t buy you happiness.'

PATSY: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to work in this tiny old shop, with great big holes in the roof.

PATTY: Shop? You were lucky to have a shop! We used to work in the owner’s garage, all twenty-six of us, no classroom. Half the BCs leaked; we would all fight over the one regulator that didn’t freeflow for fear of drowning!

PAT: You were lucky to have a garage! *We* used to have to work in an alleyway!

PADDY: Oh we used to DREAM of working in an alleyway! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to work in a public restroom in a fishing marina. We’d start class every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! Alleyway!? Heh.

PATSY: Well when I say “shop” it was only a construction site covered by a piece of tarp, but it was a shop to us.

PATTY: Our boss got us evicted from *our* construction site; we had to go and work in a quarry!

PAT: You were lucky to have a QUARRY! There were a hundred and sixty of us working in a mask box in the middle of Route 1.

PADDY: Plastic box?

PAT: Yeah.

PADDY: You were lucky. We worked for three months in an old pizza box in a dumpster. We used to have to start class at six o'clock in the morning, clean the dumpster, eat a piece of stale crust, crew the boat for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got back to the shop, our course director would make us do paperwork for the next four hours!

PATTY: Luxury. We used to have to get to the quarry at three o'clock in the morning, clean the quarry, eat a handful of yesterday’s guest trail mix, crew the boat every day for $10 a month, come back to the quarry, and our boss would beat us until we made $5000 in sales, if we were LUCKY!

PAT: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get to the mask box at twelve o'clock at night, and lick Route 1 clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of month-old trail mix, worked twenty-four hours a day on the boat for $5 every six years, and when we got back to the shop, the boss would slice us in two with a dive knife.

PATSY: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of seawater, work twenty-nine hours a day on the boat, and pay the captain for permission to crew, and when we got back to the shop, the boss and the course director would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

PADDY: But you try and tell the DMCs today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..