My dive instructor was a Marine diver. Fun guy, no nonsense. He thought that some of the accessories people bought were a bit foolish, a dive knife being one he had little use for in most cases. Learning to buddy breathe, he joked that if you ever gave your regulator to a panicked diver, you'd find out what a dive knife was really for. Good joke.
Fast forward a couple of weeks: We're doing an open water dive at Sand Harbor in Lake Tahoe. He had me paired with a 15 year old kid. We did our ditch and don, and got to the the buddy breathing exercise. He popped his regulator out alright, and accepted mine just fine. But then his eyes were big as dollars. I gestured that it was my turn to breathe, and he firmly shook his head, NO!
Dang, no dive knife! Laughin'.
So I grabbed his regulator and popped in my mouth. Now we were both breathing, so I grabbed him and popped the CO2 inflator on his buoyancy vest, and up we went. On the surface, he was more agreeable to giving me back my regulator.
Last edited by denton; 05/29/20.
