Or maybe, it is like a side show I once saw at the circus. “The Fish Man,” they called him. I watched the man in the human-sized fish tank. He even swam like a fish. The tank was small, but he managed all sorts of aquatic maneuvers. Bending his back and kicking the water with flipper-like feet, he could swim circles round and round in the tank. It even seemed that he had webbing between his fingers and his toes (but that could have been makeup and prosthetics).

I read the plaque nailed to the top of a stake that was driven into the wet ground in front of the tank. The plaque read thus:

“Behold the Fish Man. He was not born this way. He chose to become like a fish. Some rumors say that he once told his mother while taking a bath that he preferred it underwater. He began learning to hold his breath. At first, like any person, he could only hold his breath for sixty seconds. Over the years, spending all his time underwater, the Fish Man learned, by various unknown methods, to hold his breath for longer and longer. Today, the Fish Man only comes out of water once in the morning and once in the evening. He sleeps at the bottom of the same tank that you see him in now.”

At the time, I didn’t for a second believe it. I figured there must be some invisible breathing tube worked into the tank, and by some sleight of hand, or sleight of swim, the Fish Man was able to take a breath from the tube as he completed one of his back-bending flip maneuvers. I watched him for a while but couldn’t catch a moment where the Fish Man seemed to do anything like breathing through an invisible tube.

I couldn’t help but wonder to myself what it had been like for the Fish Man to learn to hold his breath. Even if it was a sham, he probably had some talents for holding his breath underwater.