You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

0
1

[–] Fairle 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Wow, I have a lot of these. Haha. I guess I tell the scariest one.

I don't remember my exact age, but I was small. Probably around 8 or 9. My family used to be big into tubing and we went to a river where a wall had been built with a small opening on the side that tubers could ride down like a small water ride. It spat you out pretty roughly onto the other side (which was pretty deep, maybe 10 feet or so). Nothing about it was particularly dangerous...unless your were tiny and got caught underneath the undertow (that's probably not the correct term, the current coming from the opening was extremely strong and went all the way to the other side of the river).

I had never tubed alone before, always in someone's lap, so I begged my mother to allow me to go by myself. I was given a tube that in hindsight had been to big and too thin to really hold me in, so right as I hit the bottom of the slide I flipped and was pushed to the bottom of the river. I remember hitting my head on rocks and blacking out. When I came to, the undertow had me pinned down and I felt like I was doing somersaults. I tried swimming but that only made me lose my bearing of what was up or down and I kept crashing into rocks on to bottom of the river. I remember my only thoughts being "I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die" like a page of script on a screen. I relaxed and eventually could tell I was floating up. I bumped my head against something soft, then a hand grabbed the back of my suit and hoisted me up. I had come up underneath some random guy and I could hear my mother on the other side screaming and screaming. The guy held onto me until a cousin who had dove in swam up to us, grabbed me and took me to shore.

It must have not phased me all that much since I never tubed in anyone's lap again after that.

0
1

[–] Reow [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

I tried swimming but that only made me lose my bearing of what was up or down and I kept crashing into rocks on to bottom of the river.

This was one of the things I really remember / relate to, from when I almost drowned in the ocean after being caught in a rip. As I was swimming back to shore, I had waves crash on me and push me under, and I felt like I was in one of those front-load washing machines (being somersaulted repeatedly). When it first happened, I tried to swim to the surface and found I was swimming to the seabed instead. After that when it happened again, I just held my breath, relaxed, and went with it. That also sucked somewhat, because there was an undercurrent and I got dragged out more. I was eventually lucky enough to get a series of clean breaks and learn when to exert effort and when not to.

0
1

[–] Fairle 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

The ocean terrifies me. There's some small sense of control for me in a river...but not any in an ocean. Reading that was scary.

How far out did it end up taking you?