Now 94% Less Likely to Drown Anyone

I got the results of my boat license test back today, and your boy Dave scored a whopping 94%. That’s 34 out of 36 questions correct. The questions I got wrong were “How do you properly dry a life jacket?” There were 4 photos to choose from a) a life jacket beside a radiator. b) a life jacket on a clothesline. c) a life jacket on a coat hanger and d) a life jacket in a dryer. I chose the clothesline, as that’s the way we do it here in Portland, but the correct answer was apparently the coat hanger. Yes, I am still scratching my head as well. But I think the O.P.P. will look the other way on that slip up.

The second incorrectly answered question was “Which one of these buoys means to watch out for swimmers?” The cartoons included the “Diver Down” flag made famous by the similarly titled Van Halen record, a white stick, a green buoy and a red buoy. Now, everyone knows the red and green ones are channel markers and the pure white one looked really unimpressive and not at all conducive to keeping kids from being turned into chum, so I went with Diver Lee Roth. After all… a diver underwater is a swimmer, right? Wrong. It turns out that the plain white is the one meant to protect human life on a bright sunny summer afternoon. Now I know, and knowing is ha… (bump) … what was that? It’d be easier to see if you painted it blue and chained it a foot under the surface.

Writing may be sporadic over the next week. If you’re a Boston-based friend, call my old number to get the new one from the voicemail message. Godspeed to myself, on land, sea and air.