Like most everyone, there are things in life that make me nervous; frighten me even. But there are a rare couple of things that in my case are severe phobias. One of them? Deep water; a condition frequently referred to as bathophobia. See when I was a kid, around six or seven, I took diving lessons. And at one of those lessons, I — apparently, a pretty terrible diver — hit my head on the diving board when it was my turn to go, got knocked out, and regained consciousness after I’d sunk almost to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. I had to swivel sticks up like a crazy pants to get air in time to not drown. (Um, Diving Instructors? Other Lifeguards? Where were you guys? I still wonder…) Anyway, after that, water past a certain — and very shallow — depth has provoked nothing less than pure terror in me. So during my vacation last week to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean, my fierce wish to spend an hour swimming with dolphins presented something of a conundrum. After the jump — how I pulled it off.