Have you ever been drinking from a bottle of water, looked at the water as it flowed into your mouth, and as you did so, feel like you were drowning and begin to choke?
I have.
I was about 8 years old that summer. My family had rented a house on the lake, and unlike all the other hyperactive children there, I preferred to stay indoors and read, instead of joining them in all their games.
One bright August morning, I stepped outside and was greeted by the next door neighbor’s son. “Hey, why do you always stay inside? You’re still so pale even though it’s August. You wanna come play with me and my friends?”
I simply stared at him, uncertain of how to answer. He stared back, unflinching; he must have been about my age, your average white bread American kid. I finally answered, “Um, ok.” I put the book I had been carrying down on the backyard table and walked over to him. “What are you going to do today?”
“The usual,” he grinned at me. We walked around and rounded up most of the kids from the families around the lake- he was popular and only didn’t talk to a few kids that I guess they deemed losers- a bunch of 6 – 10 year olds, both girls and boys.
We spent most of the day just bumming around by the dock. Every so often, one of the kids would take a run and a jump and cannonball into the lake, swim around a bit, then come back. I recall that it wasn’t tons of fun; there were moments when I wished desperately to be finishing the book I had started reading.
The moment I remember distinctly wanting to be at home came when the neighbor boy asked me if I knew how to swim. “Yeah, I know how to swim,” I blurted. “I just don’t feel like it. I don’t have my swim gear on.”
The truth was, I had barely passed my swimming lessons. I could swim, I wasn’t good at it. I could barely doggy paddle.
“Come on,” he taunted. “Let’s see you swim.” He wouldn’t stop bugging me until finally he offered me $100 and he would strip naked for everyone to see, if I would swim to the buoy and back.
The buoy was about 100 feet away from the edge of the dock. It didn’t look far, and I was curious to see what a penis looked like. The other girls were pressuring me to do it as well- they wanted to know, too. And $100 was a lot of money…
“If it’ll shut you up…” I glared at him defiantly. I stripped down to my panties and left my t shirt on. I walked off the dock and attempted a nice looking dive, but failed. I surfaced and spluttered a bit.
“We’re waiting,” he called out, standing above me. I glowered up at him, turned around and started a freestyle stroke.
A few feet later, something grabbed at my foot. My first thought was that the neighbor boy was playing a prank on me, so I kicked it. Hard. Whatever it was let go of my foot, but I had already lost my concentration and began to sink.
Water poured into my mouth.
Just like when you drink from a bottle of water…
originally written & posted sometime in 2003
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