Cave diving with the insane

My daughter has ADD. When I say she has ADD, I mean she can’t finish a sneeze without starting a new art project. Her mind is an endless rollercoaster that only stops for princess-level emergencies and shiny doodads with which she lines her nest.

The flipside of ADD is powerful, unwavering, laser-like focus, which, when joined with fear, makes for a splendid day of cave diving in Mexico, which is where (my attorney) and I decided we’d take our kids during August (the month wherein your shoes melt).

On our way to this cave, or cenote in Spanish (death hole in fear-nglish), the sun tried every trick in the book to make our skin bubble and melt our jeep. So when we finally arrived at the cenote and crawled haltingly down the rickety wooden walkway into its gaping mouth, we were kind of on fire. Getting our kids to jump off the end of that rickety walk into crystal-clear water was slightly mitigated by our impending immolation, and with a splash and a lot of screaming we found ourselves floating in the cool, cool blue water with a bunch of other pale gringos.

We paddled our family up to the rest of the group where the guide was whispering important instructions about avoiding the needle-sharp stalactites aimed for heads, how to make sure our flotation device stayed tight, not to drop the waterproof flashlight, and to please be quiet so as not to disturb the thousands, and thousands, and thousands of sleeping bats hanging from the ceiling only inches from our faces, to which my daughter replied: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

A couple of stalactites broke off and killed a guy from Wisconsin. We all slowly looked up at the ceiling, only 20 or so inches away, which was wriggling with snoring, leathery, winged rodents. Batman would have pooped in his tights. Our daughter, however, could not take her eyes off them. She kept a running, whispering monologue of exactly how close we were to them, a monologue that began to rise as the bat-coated ceiling dipped toward us as we drifted toward a stalactite-toothed cavern entrance designed by the “Lord of the Rings” special effects crew to look creepy. As we got closer, her voice got higher and louder — and though I can’t understand a lot of Spanish, I do know the major curse words and gordo (which means fat man), and I can translate the glares we were getting without even looking at a book.

Breaking off from his scowl, our guide informed us we’d need to be careful as the water got shallower because the bottom of the cenote was cushioned by about nine feet of pure guano.

“What’s guano?” my daughter asked, between screams.

Before I could say, “Don’t tell her!” the guy closest to us said, “It’s bat poop,” and the girl morphed into some kind of top-lure imitation as she tried to float between the leering ceiling fangs, the hungry bats, and a watery carpet of poop.

I learned a lot from our recent vacations. I now know how much waterproof flashlights cost in pesos. I know what cave bats smell like. I know how it feels to step onto the cruise ship and realize you got back 17 pesos from the $200 bill you used to buy $3 of ice cream. And I learned that all my future vacations will occur at home. We’ll watch the Nat Geo channel. It’s almost the same — and much safer.

Bull Garlington lives in a standard two kids, wife, dog, corner-lot, two-car dream package. He drives a 2003 Camry, sports a considerable notebook fetish, and smokes Arturo Fuente Partaga Maduros at the Cigar King as often as possible. His stories have appeared in Florida, Orlando, Orlando Weekly, Catholic Digest, Retort, Another Realm, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, South Lit, and other magazines. His short story collection, “King of the Road,” is available on Amazon. His column “My Funny Life,” was nominated for a national humor award. He is the author of the infamous anti-parenting blog, Death By Children; the anti-writing blog, Creative Writer Pro; and co-author of “The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats.”