Anyone who's read "The Waxident" will know that Kuniko, my favorite waxing lady ever, left me with no warning and that I was very upset about it. After that I had to try someone new, so I started seeing Choon. She was fine, but more expensive because, as you know, Kuniko gave me a secret discount.
So in October of 2007, I was getting ready to go on a cruise to the Western Caribbean and made a visit to Choon at Anthony Garubo. She asked me what I was going to do on the cruise so I told her that I was just going to go to the beaches... I wasn't interested in any excursions.
This is when Choon started telling me about all of her snorkeling experiences. She and her boyfriend were seriously into snorkeling and she tried to convince me to try it. Well, the funny thing about that is: I have tried it. So I told her my story...
March 2006:
I am prepared to snorkel. I am mentally prepared to face my fear of fish touching me. I am equipped with the mask and snorkel I brought thousands of miles by air and sea to Grand Cayman. I paid for the cruise excursion and I have Jill, my snorkel buddy there with her flippers and mask.
When they tell us that we're going to go to the end of the pier and climb into the water, I'm definitely put off because I was expecting to wade into the water and stay in the shallow end. But when they tell us that we might see a large fish that looks like a shark but isn't, I am no longer prepared for this. I've got my mask on and my flippers on and I've got my underwater camer hanging on it's little rubber band from my wrist. I'm lagging behind the group a bit because I'm nervous as hell and I want to see every last person get in the water before I try it.
So finally, Jill gets in and it's my turn. So I turn my back to the water and take hold of the ladder's railings, lowering my flippered feet one-by-one onto the steps. Over the course of the next five minutes I make it about half way down the ladder and the rest of the group is getting pretty far away from the dock. There's a group coming in, but there is no way I'm rushing into the water to let them out and I'm not ready to give up on the idea altogether, and since there is another ladder, I decide they only need one and I clearly need the other.
Little by little, I lower myself into the water and finally I let go of the ladder.
5
4
3
2
1
Splash, splash, splash, I am flipping and paddling myself back to my ladder and pulling myself out of that water exponentially faster than I got in. If this had been TiVo, it would have been frame by frame into the water and then 3x fast forward out.
I'm flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flopping back down the dock and then I hear another flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flop behind me and I turn around and it's a terrified, half-drowned Jill running for her life from the shark (the one they told us was not a shark). I just want to say that she was brave. I surely would have all-the-way drowned if I saw that thing.
The instructor who stayed back comes over to us and we're huffing and puffing and practically falling over thanks to our flippers and asks what's wrong. Well Jill saw the shark-fish, and I'm just a baby. But I'm really disappointed that I won't get to see any fish, so the instructor walks us over to this shallow pool of ocean that is MAYBE a foot deep and tells me to practice there. So I examine the area and decide that it's safe.
Jill's finding it quite amusing to see me on my hands and knees, face in the water, butt in the air looking at sand, and since she's got the underwater camera now... she's documenting my snorkeling experience. And laughing at me.
...
So I finish telling this story to Choon, and she's on the verge of wetting her pants. She's already laughing so hard she's crying, and she's relentless. I don't think I've ever been laughed AT so hard in my life. I feel really safe and secure in her room now. NOT. And can you even believe this... she had me bring in the pictures of my with my face in the water and she put it up on her wall! And she made fun of me every time after that. What a joke.
At 9 a.m. on the Friday that began my Spring Break, I was woken up by the furious sound of my door being beaten down and my doorbell screaming. In a dreamy fog, wearing only a T-shirt, I stumbled to the door of my Trembley Park apartment. Through my peephole I saw none other than the Lehigh Police. I could not even fathom why the police would be brutalizing my door and stealing the early morning sleep I had been enjoying. I opened the door with one hand and tried to pull down my shirt with the other.
As it turned out, the police thought that they were coming to the aid of helpless prisoners trapped in their own apartment. The reason they thought this was because of the sign in our window, meant to be a joke, which read “Send Help.”
So the Lehigh Police sent help. They sent it in the form of a door-banging, bell-ringing, mean man who took my sign and refused to tell me why.
The Lehigh Police were actually doing their job for the first time in recorded history, only it was like wearing sunglasses at night: unnecessary and just plain stupid.
I was very angry. Not only was I woken up two hours early and yelled at, but I was forced to hand over my property without reason. This might make anyone angry, but the reason I was angry is that I have asked the Lehigh Police for help in the past, and did not receive it.
Soon after several off-campus robberies in the fall, my roommates and I left an off-campus party hoping to Take a Ride Around Campus Safely with T.R.A.C.S. We were concerned about the risk of being approached by a bandit, so we went to nearest call box, pressed “HELP” and asked the police to send T.R.A.C.S. to the rescue. The man on the phone said that the vans were no longer in service, but that he would send someone to make sure we were OK.
We waited. We called again.
Soon, a police car pulled up and the driver asked us if we were OK. We said that we were waiting for T.R.A.C.S. and that we did not feel comfortable walking all the way home alone. The officer said, “This isn’t an escort service, you can’t just call us like a taxi.” Then he sped off, probably to break up some party on the Hill.
We asked the police to send help; they told us they would not. We put a sign up in our window; they came barging in when they were not welcome.
Even more dramatic was the incident reported in The Brown and White police blotter as, “Criminal Mischief — On Dec. 18, a window in Trembley Park was damaged. The incident is under investigation.” The window in question was not damaged. In fact, it was totally destroyed by jars of apple butter and a case of beer that were all thrown at our double-paned window in the middle of the night. My roommate walked into our apartment and saw what looked like ice chips covering every inch of our apartment. She realized it was glass and called the police.
The police asked what time the incident happened, who was around before, if they had been drinking and if there were any suspects.
Then the officers left the scene. No fingerprints, no assistance, no comfort; just the cold winter wind blowing through our new gaping hole.
The glass was in the cups in our cabinets, covering our couch and embedded in the carpet. If anyone had been sitting on the couch, he or she would have been seriously injured by the wall of glass. The incident is not under investigation — it was abandoned by the police. To this day I am still finding tiny bits of glass all over my apartment.
I suppose I haven’t had the best interactions with the Lehigh Police, but I would like to know, who has? Have they ever helped anyone in trouble or have they only stopped us from having fun, kept us from making jokes, and ticketed us for parking in our own parking lots?
The cherry on this hot fudge sundae came today when I picked up my precious sign from the police station. It was damaged, again with no explanation from the police. I could not even feign surprise.
