Imagine your doorbell rings and, to your surprise, it's a colorful school of 1,500 tropical fish.
Actually, they wouldn't even bother to ring your doorbell - they would just stream in through your open windows and swirl around, staring at you while you're eating breakfast. or taking a shower or writing an absurd column on a home fish invasion.
It would be alarming, to say the least. Their uninvited presence would seem intrusive, unnatural. This is because fish don't really belong in our world, just as I have concluded that I don't really belong in theirs.
Recently, I went on a delightful family vacation to Mexico, a country many Americans have been avoiding on account of a reasonable fear of flu, not fish. We traveled to Tulum, and stayed within boating distance of the world's second-largest barrier reef. Diving and snorkeling excursions left daily from our resort.
I have tried scuba diving before, and I basically felt like a person strapped to life support in an intensive care unit of a hospital ship who was suddenly tossed overboard for a look-see. I couldn't enjoy the scenery for the overwhelming sound of my scary respirations. So I declined that adventure this time around and signed up for the snorkeling trip instead.
It was a warm and windy day, and the surf was choppy out on the translucent, mint-green Caribbean. We waded out to the boat, and while the crew loaded the equipment and helped the passengers board one by one, the boat rocked to and fro, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro - and if this sentence is making you sick, you are getting the idea. Soon the hue of my complexion matched the sea. It was a good thing I did not have a command of the Spanish language because I might have made a terse, ugly-American comment such as: "Can we get this show on the road?"
You see, the Mexican people are a joyful people who take their time through life, celebrating each moment with an incredible variety of tequilas. I exaggerate, but the fact is they seem to be very relaxed in a temporal sense, in no particular hurry to meet any sort of schedule. When the boat finally arrived at its destination alongside the reef, the guide looked directly at me and said: "Some of you may be more comfortable waiting in the water." I quickly disembarked, trying to regain my equilibrium.
