300 Dolphins and the Best Bad Day of My Life
Part 2 of Summer School, five lessons I learned outside school walls, written while Flying Colors was still a messy draft.
In July of 1990, I had a bad day. The plan called for heels dug into the beach sands of Athens, Greece, accompanied by great friends while I gazed at crystal blue water as far as the eye could see. The reality? I had the water part. I had the friends part. The problem? They were as cranky as I was because crystal blue water surrounded us as far as we could see on all sides, with no Greece in sight.
Instead of the port call to Athens and other popular locales, my buddies and I bobbed in the open ocean, captive on a naval destroyer off the coast of Africa. Civil war had erupted in Liberia, and our ship, the fastest in the battle group, diverted in a frantic rush to deploy Navy SEALs off the coast. Goodbye France, goodbye Spain, goodbye Greece.
After two months of steaming in a square-mile pattern over the horizon, the only glimpse of the “coast” was the occasional mirage. Sir-crazy didn’t begin to describe us. But there were bright spots.
One sailor cast a lure over the gunwale, letting it trail beside the ship. As several crusty sailors claimed the foolish fisherman would catch nothing but a sunburn, the line buzzed. Neon green and yellow flashed in the blue water, a mahi-mahi. The captain ordered the ship to go dead in the water and dispatched the whaleboat to haul the huge fish onboard. The whole ship feasted that night on the first fresh seafood in months courtesy of John Nye, optimist and fisherman extraordinaire.
We had a swim call too, a chance to jump off the ship’s side to float in the open ocean. In my two years on the ship, we’d never had one, so I was excited. The excitement faded when I saw two sailors hovering thirty feet above us with automatic rifles.
“What are you guys doing?” someone in my swim group called.
“Shark lookout!” one shouted back.
I looked around and realized none of the old-timers had joined the young guys on the swim call.
I had two hopes as I swam: One, that there was no need to use the guns. Second, if we needed them, I hoped the sailors had outstanding aim and would hit the shark, not me.
But most days crushed us under the equatorial heat. On this day in July, I worked alone on the ship's large stern—my nose literally to the grindstone—armed with goggles, an ear protection headset, and a rotary grinder.
You haven’t lived until you’ve sanded paint off the decks of a navy ship in 110-degree weather. As the sanding wheel cast sparks in every direction, I remember one thought spinning through my head:
I’d rather be any place on earth than here right now.
After a while, I grew tired of listening to myself gripe. I ripped off my goggles and ear protection, tossed them onto the shirt I’d peeled off earlier, and stepped to the side of the ship to clear my mind. A molten breeze singed the sweat off me. Then something happened that I’ll never forget.
In the distance off our port-side rear quarter, the ocean bubbled and frothed. I stared hard at the horizon, my mind unable to comprehend what I saw. Was it a tidal wave coming at us? Was there an undersea volcanic eruption?
Leaning over the railing, my feet welded to the deck, I kept staring, thinking: should I call the bridge to alert them? But alert them to what?
There are times in life when the world tilts and for a few precious moments, the curtain of the universe parts to reveal the workings behind it. At that moment, an overwhelming peace descends and you know, no matter what happened before, or what happens tomorrow, all will be fine because there is more to this world than meets the eye.
Hanging over the side of that ship, eyes wide, one of those moments rushed me like never before. Leaping from the water in long, graceful arcs, not one, not twenty, but at least 300 dolphins raced toward me.
The random synchronicity of so many dolphins arcing over the water, their school stretching wide across the horizon, growing larger as they bounded in playful leaps toward our ship, was the single most beautiful natural event I’ve witnessed in my life.
Right before I opened my mouth to share my excitement with anyone in shouting distance, someone amidships beat me to it in a triumphant call. “Dolphins!”
I leaned over the side to peer at the edge of the upper decks as excited souls crowded its sides. The dolphins swept past the ship, parting to skirt our gunmetal gray insignificance that claimed a tiny spot in a vast ocean.
So many sailors simultaneously sprinted to the other side of the ship that I half expected it to lean starboard under their shifting weight. As we watched the dolphins leap their way to the opposite horizon, only one thought leaped through my mind:
There is no place on earth I’d rather be right now.
Cesare Pavese wrote, “We do not remember days; we remember moments.”
Truth speaks volumes. I didn't have a bad day. I had a bad moment, followed by a glorious one I've carried with me all my life.
The summer school lesson I tucked away from the experience is that we all straddle a fine line. Sometimes we focus so hard on the bad, we miss the good.
I cringe to think of the sight and experience I’d have missed had I not taken that moment to clear my head. With the ear protection and noise from the grinder, I’d never have known something miraculous passed me by.
Could something negative have filled your vision in the past while the universe showed off while you were unaware? Perhaps.
The next time something bad pulls your attention, take a break and look hard enough around you. Maybe a miracle, be it large or small, is over the horizon, ready to sweep into your life.
