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Every year, when the young men of Tarpon Springs dive for the cross on the day of the Epiphany, the question occurs to me, and I can't shake it loose.
The question came up again Tuesday, when the ritual was repeated in the chilly waters of Spring Bayou:
How come girls can't dive too?
I don't mean to shake up a tradition nearly a century old, the biggest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Really I don't.
Wait. That's not completely true.
The day's events are rich with tradition and are archaic beyond words. The dive into the bayou honors the baptism of Christ by St. John the Baptist. The boys, between the ages of 16 and 18, are after the prize of all prizes, a wooden cross trimmed with lead so it will sink. Whoever gets the cross keeps it. He is promised a blessed year and a memory that lasts a lifetime.
Girls do have a role, but it is smaller, gentler. One hand-picked teenager - a 13-year-old this time - releases a dove over the bayou moments before the dive.
That's what the event looks like from the inside out.
From the outside in, it looks like a heck of a way to toast old notions of male superiority and to test young masculinity. Instead of who's the fairest of them all, the question is who's the strongest.
Talking about this won't change a thing. Still, I put the question about girls and the dive to Emmanuel Gombos, assistant principal at Tarpon Springs High School and the man in charge of Tuesday's events.
He sounded like he wished I would disappear. He's heard these questions before. They've been coming up since the 1980s, he said. Right around diving day, the complaining starts. "Then it dies. It's not a burning desire," he said.
"Our young ladies are not raised to bring it up. They know they have a place in their church, and they know what their place is.
"They may feel slighted at times, but deep down inside, I don't think they do," Gombos said.
You may guess from this that Gombos doesn't want girls putting so much as a pretty polished toe in the bayou. And you'll be right. He doesn't think it's their place.
It wasn't their place in the '60s, when he was a boy in the water.
This is all hard to reconcile, a couple times over.
As a school official, Gombos is charged with helping both girls and boys reach their full potential. His obligation can't be clouded by private views.
More generally, the world has moved on. There are Greek women lawyers and doctors, as well as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
One of those Greek Orthodox women who has moved up is Stella T. Galaris, a lawyer from Dunedin. The yearly dive is a powerful symbol to her, in which her faith and her gender completely conflict.
Words like those of Emmanuel Gombos drive her up a wall. She considers herself a feminist, a firm believer that women should do whatever they choose - even if it means diving in the bayou.
Still, she struggles. She clings to the faith of her childhood. "One of the nice things about the Greek Orthodox church is that it hasn't changed. That's what orthodoxy is," she said.
So, if somebody could convince Galaris that this ban on girls at Spring Bayou is a matter of religion, the book would be closed for her. But if the no-girls-allowed rule is just some throwback concocted by men who thought women should never leave the kitchen, Galaris relishes the thought of cheering on teenage girls in their pursuit of the wooden cross.
And why not? Why not a girl brave and tough enough to thrash her way through cold water, under and over the arms and legs of 40 to 50 scrambling boys?
She might not take the cross.
But wouldn't it be grand if she did?