"Would you want to go caving?"

was the question being asked me in the supermarket yesterday. There were two men discussing the attempts to rescue the men stuck in a cave system in Laos. 

One of these two men apparently knew the man from this state who had gone to help with the rescue. Neither man knew much about "caving" but neither wanted to do it. 

I hope they did not realise how much even the question made me feel shaky. I do not like very small, dark spaces. The idea of being in dark, wet, cold place where you can barely move and there is rough rock around you is the stuff of nightmares. Why do people want to do it?

It rates along with climbing Mt Everest or rowing across the Pacific in a rubber dinghy for me. I will never do any of these things. I would not want to do them even if I had the physical capacity to do them.

My parents took us on a caravan trip to the neighbouring state one year. It was not quite a holiday. The Senior Cat had a two day conference at the other end. Mum was checking out the then boarding school for the children of Christian Scientists. She wanted us to go there. We did not want to go but, if the money had been there, my brother and I would have been dispatched to it. Fortunately the idea never came to anything. I think we really would have run away if she had succeeded. 

Perhaps it was that visit and the awareness of a certain tension between our parents that made the trip to the caves more stressful. There had been no argument. They did not argue. I suppose the Senior Cat knew there was no real likelihood of us being sent off to any boarding school in another state. The money simply would not be there. Mum's parents had no money and nobody else was going to pay for it. Mum got as far as the deposit for me and no further. She must have paid for it herself. I remember seeing the uniform list that was sent. Perhaps the association with that memory is part of the next.

On the way back we took it slowly towing a tiny caravan. We came along the coastline and then inland slightly. There was the "Blue Lake" and then, a bit further along, there were the caves. In those days you could just go in and out with a local person to show you. The caves were nothing like the caves the men were trapped in but they are still caves. They are dark and damp and all the stalactites and stalagmites in the world did not make it "beautiful" for me. I hated it. Mum insisted I went on into it, that I walked (or stumbled) around it. She gave us all a lesson on how they were formed and why they were so significant. I hated every minute of it. I was just told, "Don't be so silly. If you don't stop behaving like that now I will..." I cannot remember what the proposed punishment was. I was probably too frightened by then.

My brother backed me. I remember him saying, "It was horrible in there. I don't ever want to be a cave man." 

I have no doubt my mother genuinely believed she was providing us with an experience that we would appreciate. She had visited the caves as a child and apparently enjoyed the experience. That any of us might not feel the same way almost certainly would have surprised her. 

I remember the wonderful sensation of coming outside again. The sky was a solid blue. The air was warm. It was a different sort of quiet. I could hear the birds. There were all sorts of colours around me again. It felt so much safer. 

We went on to the place where we would be spending the night. I watched the road and counted fence posts and tried not to think of the caves. Mum was still rather cross with us. We were told we did not appreciate how lucky we were. Perhaps we did not - or perhaps we did.

That evening Mum sent my brother and me off to the shower block of the caravan park. She could see us from where we had to go I suppose. It was growing dark by then but that did not bother us. I can remember my brother saying, "I am never never never going in another cave." I could only fervently agree.