On that first afternoon at family reunion, I took one look at the girls my age and decided to save myself the boredom and utter humiliation of playing tea-party and dolls with that lot of prissy little clean-freaks. My mom said I should play with the other girls my age, but there was a grander scheme to things in my seven-year-old mind. I remembered the words to a song just then—a song my dad used to sing occasionally at bedtime: “I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but my mamma won’t admit it. I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but if I say I am, I get it!” My dad singing those words always made me laugh. Even though I knew I’d come out of my mom’s tummy as a girl, I was sure there must have been some mistake in heaven. I was a tom-boy to the most extreme sense of the term, but every time I told my mom I was a boy, I about got my ear pulled off.
Now, in my opinion, we were at family reunion to camp out, play in the dirt, go swimming in the lake, burn things up in the camp fire, and go exploring--not sit around and stay out of trouble. That would be so nose-pickingly boring! I shuddered at the thought. So, I went in search of the boys.
When I found my cousins Steven and Kevin, they said I couldn’t play with them because I was a girl. Insulted at being called the G-word, I showed them just how tough I was by beating Steven in a race and wrestling Kevin to the ground. After the three of us got over the initial G-I-R-L issue, we got alone just swell.
That evening, Kevin, Steven, and I begged our parents to let us go swimming in the lake, but they put us off, saying we’d all go swimming tomorrow morning before lunch. With much disappointment, the three of us decided to just walk around the lake, and LOOK at it, since we weren’t allowed to get in it yet. (We were smart enough to realize that the evidence would be painfully clear if we did in fact disobey our parents and take even a quick hop into the lake.)
On our walk, we bragged about how good each one of us could swim. "I can swim faster than a shark!” Kevin boasted.
“Well I swim faster than the monkeys in Monkey Land,” came Steven's rebuttal. Since I had never heard of Monkey Land, I pretended to be astonished and amazed, especially when Kevin’s reaction was awe-struck and reverenced at the mention of Monkey Land.
I had to do better than the monkeys though, especially since I didn’t want either one of my cousins to find out that I couldn’t really swim at all. That would be un-tough and un-cool, and they might think I was a girl again. “I can hold my breath for a hundred minutes!”
“Psh! No way! There’s no such think as holding your breath for a hundred minutes!” Steven said to me. I silently cursed Steven’s logic.
Just then, we came up to a fisherman. He probably wasn’t more than 17 or 18, but to us seven-year-olds, he was a grownup. We started grilling him with questions, such as, “How many fish have you caught?” and “Where do you come from?” and “What are all those red bumps on your face?”
The young man was kind enough to answer our questions with a happy grin. As we stood there watching him fish, he actually caught one. When he reeled it in he let us hold the fish and stroke it a bit. I looked at Mr. Fish, seeing his slightly glazed, glossy eye looking up at me. The fisherman carefully unlaced the hook from the fish’s mouth and threw Mr. Fish back into the lake (I was really into explosives and blowing things up).
The next morning after eating a good breakfast of soggy French toast and charred bacon strips all smothered in syrup and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter, Kevin, Steven, and I ganged up with Craig and Christopher to take hatchet-lessons from Michael, who was an Eagle Scout. I had no idea what that meant, but it had to be something REALLY good if Michael knew how to use a hatchet. I told Michael that I wanted to be an Eagle Scout, just like him, but he only laughed and said, “You can’t do that, you’re a girl!” I pulled him aside after that and asked him not to say it so loudly (that I was a girl), just in case the other guys found out.
Right then, Craig said, “Hey! All the ‘dolts are goin’ swimming!” We all scrambled into our swimming suits and rushed to meet the parents by the lake side. Anxious to get into the water, none of us really paid attention to the Swimming Safety Rules spiel. The water lapped up against the rocks, beckoning me to come in for a while.
My father asked me if I wanted to wear a life jacket so that I could float and not have to worry about staying in the shallow parts. Embarrassed beyond my seven-year-old comprehension, I told him that of course I didn’t want a life jacket. I didn’t want Steven and Kevin to think I was a wimp or a pansy or a girl because I couldn’t swim.
We had fun playing games like Shark Attack, Marco Polo, and other such things. At one point, the game-playing dissipated, and I was left on my own. I’d had several close calls previously when my cousins had almost discovered the fact that in order for me to breathe, I had to stop and stand on the bottom of the lake and my head above water to get my air. I couldn’t even tread water. It was then I decided that I ought to spend my time practicing holding my breath and swimming back and forth so it wouldn’t be completely obvious that my style of swimming was more like doggy-paddling with standing-up-to-breathe breaks.
Deciding to see how far I could swim without taking a breath, I started at the edge of the lake and aimed for the opposite shore. After swimming for what seemed like ages, I stood up and took a breather. I looked back at my distance from the shore and I was embarrassed at the pathetic gap between me and my starting point. I had to do better than that. Taking in as much air as my little lungs could hold, I set off for the other side once more.
This is far enough, I told myself, still trying to paddle further on my quest to cross the lake. I needed air. I tried to stand up, but I suddenly realized there was nothing beneath my feet but water. I struggled to keep my head up, gasping for oxygen. Crying for help, I quickly realized my efforts were futile. I was choking on water before any sound could escape. I tried again and again to keep myself above the surface, but soon, not even my outstretched hands were breaking the surface.
Nobody can see me, I told myself. No one is even going to know that I’m drowning. My fighting became weaker and weaker against the force that was pulling me down. Inward thoughts drew my attention away from what was going on around me, what was happening, the algae floating across my vision in the murky water.
Why didn’t Dad see me before I went under the water? He could have saved me, but he’s not paying attention. Death isn’t so bad. When I die, my parents will be sorry for all the mean things they ever did and said to me. My big brother Danny will probably get all my toys, and little Jared will want some of them, too. I’ll never get to know what baby Jana will be like. Maybe she and I would have been good friends if I had lived. I hope Mr. Fish will recognize me. Mr. Fish and I are a lot alike. I don’t know why. We just are. He can be my friend now.
Completely submerged and no idea how to survive, my seven years of life didn't flash before my eyes. It's what was yet to come.
I pictured my parents dragging my sodden little body out of the water, crying and weeping over me being dead when I was just barely seven years old. I saw my body, laying there, half in and half out of the water—totally limp. But my face was not quite right for the scene. I was almost smiling, with my eye muscles totally relaxed and my eyelids shut gently. Corpses used to scare me a lot because they always looked so disgusting. Their faces were blown off by some shot-gun, or they’d been picked apart by piranhas or aliens from a different solar system (I was also into watching horror-thriller movies with my dad ... more because it was something I could do with dad and prove how tough I was, not because I enjoyed the movies). But when I saw my own dead body, I wasn’t scared anymore. I was a friendly, non-disgusting dead person, and that made me feel a little bit better about dying.
Then I was suddenly floating in the air over my funeral. From my distant view, I shook my head at the people who came to see my body and say goodbye to me. If only they knew me.
Everything went completely dark. There were no more bits of algae floating across my vision in the mucked-up water. Thoughts of Mr. Fish disappeared. It was so dark, and I hated the dark. I was afraid because I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Exploration had always been my specialty, but I knew Death was something I wouldn’t be able to come back from. The fear was too much, and I imagined someone laughing at me because I was scared of Death. Well, I was a tough kid, and I wasn’t going to let someone laugh because I wouldn’t face Death. So I gave up. There was nothing left to live for, after all. Even if there was, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to stop Death anyway. I’d seen The Twilight Zone (several episodes), and when the people were supposed to die, they always died no matter what they tried to do, so there was no use fighting it.
I closed my eyes then, held them shut, encouraging Death to do his job. But I noticed my lungs burning again. I must have opened my eyes, because suddenly, it wasn’t dark anymore. Without even thinking, I heard this voice in my mind say, You can’t die. You haven’t done what you came here to do.
That was it. Those words hit home for me in my young mind. They broke through the darkness. I made up my mind that death was no longer an option for me. Ignoring Death, my struggle began anew. Somehow, I found the strength to get myself just a little bit closer to shore—close enough that I could barely touch the bottom by standing on tip-toe, my mouth and nose just breaking the surface. Gasping in huge breaths of air, my starving lungs were bursting, urging me to get closer to shore so I could have more.
Finally taking the last step out of the lake, I glanced around me. Nobody was looking at me. No one had noticed my struggle. I was upset that I had almost died, and still no one had recognized how close to death I had been. Actually, I was more upset with myself that I had actually decided to die, and I had almost let myself do just that.
Determining to never go back into that horrible lake, I dried off and went to change into my clothes, setting off on a solitary walk through the woods to think about things far too deep and serious for a seven-year-old. Once I was away from everyone else, I decided to not talk about almost drowning—not to my parents, my brothers, my cousins… I wasn’t going to tell anyone. Tough kids don’t almost drown. Being tough meant you had to suck it up and never show weakness. I didn’t want my parents to find out either, since they’d probably tell everyone and embarrass me by making me wear a life jacket, even though I swore I was never going back in that lake. I didn’t want my parents to notice me that much anyway. Not anymore. It was rare when I need their help or when I wanted their attention. But one of those times that I really hoped my parents would be there for me, to save me, had been that morning in the lake. I realized that sometimes, you have to save yourself. You can't always count on someone else being there to save you.
I truly believe that you will find the strength if that day ever comes for you and you find yourself all but lost and totally alone in your struggles. Don't give up, keep holding on. You have a very important purpose in life, and there is a very specific reason why you are here. You have this gift of life, and a reason to live for. Find that reason to live and keep moving forward.
