Too Stupid To Live

[Mini Mia]

What moments in your life did you survive?

[Mini Mia]

Okay. I'm short. So, one day, as a teenager, my sister, cousin and I are out floating on air mattresses in a lake. None of us could swim.

My sister says, "I wonder how deep we are?"

I say, "I'll find out!"

And I jump off of my mattress and go in over my head. When I come up all I can think is, I've hit the spot where there's a sunken in hole. I yell, "Drop Off!"

Choking and coughing, I realize my left arm is tightly wrapped around my air mattress. How that happened is beyond me, as I clearly remember jumping off with both hands up in the air.

My cousin is frantically trying to paddle her floatie out to get me, and I see my sister jump off her mattress ... I guess she thought she'd be faster without the mattress? Anyhoo, the water came up to her bikini top. And that's when I realized it wasn't a drop off, I was out in deep water. Well, water deeper than I am tall.

Yeah, talk about too stupid to live. I so could have drown if I hadn't somehow caught hold of my air mattress and clung to it as if my life depended on it. Which, of course, it did.

[Phalon]

I have never done anything remotely stupid.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

<Ok, I gotta to before I hurt myself laughing>

[stepper]

I can't top Phalon's story - she's a literary artist with a propensity for badinage.

Stupid number one – yes, there’s more than one.
I was very young (once) and the new neighbors had just built their home and moved in. They had a swimming pool – and five kids – all boys. We – the kids and I – got acquainted the first day they were there and very shortly thereafter they invited me over to join them in the pool. It was summer, it was hot, and I was excited about jumping in. I ran home, pulled on the trunks and ran back across the street. Two of them were already in the pool at the opposite end and side stepping the diving board I jumped in! It was at this point that I learned not all pools are shallow because this one had a deep end and I had found it. When I reached the bottom it was quite evident that there wasn’t a whole lot of oxygen down there.

I was excited about the pool – what I ignored was the fact that I didn’t know how to swim. Not really. I had gone with my family to a public lake to go ‘swimming’, but it wasn’t all that deep except for a few spots which I wasn’t allowed to visit. So to me, swimming meant at most chin deep water and a soft sandy bottom where you could tippy toe yourself to places where air was not so scarce. My previous swimming experiences had not prepared me for the pool at all. I kicked off the bottom and in my panic I kicked hard enough that I broke the surface, but I was in the middle of the pool so there was nothing to do but keep from drowning by flailing around until I somehow reached the side of the pool. I was embarrassed to find that the boys mother had been keeping an eye on us. Realizing I was in trouble she grabbed the pool skimmer and held it out to me so I could hold on, and she pulled me to the pools’ edge. (Honestly, I don’t think I would have drowned – but it felt that way – a little bit. All I really needed to do was reach the side of the pool. I’m sure I could have managed! But the adults didn’t see it that way. They are so unreasonable!)

The following Monday I found myself shipped off to a day camp where they taught children how to swim. Three weeks later I was in their most advanced class learning Red Cross life saving techniques, how to hip carry a struggling swimmer with reverse scissors kicks, etc. We’d canoe to the center of the lake, and then fully dressed we had to jump into the water, strip off clothes without losing any of them, and then swim back to shore – that was the reward for qualifying for the class. (It was a blast - the most fun I had that summer!)

At some point – and I don’t remember where in this story it fits – my mother pointed out that while I had not done much on the surface, she had seen me go twice the distance of the neighbors swimming pool on a single breath, under water. Repeatedly. Realizing that she was right I decided to go show the neighbors’ kids that I could do that even if I didn’t swim all that well on the top but it was not to be. The kids mom had already called and suggested it be a good idea to have someone teach me to swim before I came back and even looked at her pool. Mom’s just don’t understand.

[Mini Mia]

I had a neighbor tell me about the time she fell in over her head and her brother's hadn't noticed. One of them noticed her swimming around, and asked the others when did she learn to swim. Apparently it is possible for some to catch on quickly. Which is a very good thing.

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I was beginning to think I missed up by starting this thread. I tend to have more misses than hits when trying to come up with another interesting thread for everyone to keep bumped.