On being rescued.

My father taught me how to swim. 

I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, and it was in a kidney shaped inground pool in Myrtle Beach, S.C. It had a water slide and a rock waterfall. 

My father and I were in the shallow end, and I wasn't wearing arm floaties. He instructed me to swim to him, and I paddled like a hatched turtle into his arms.

"Faster. Faster," he said. "Lift your arms higher. Keep your mouth closed. Don't drink the water goddammit!"

And I paddled faster and lifted my arms higher and didn't drink the water.

Once, when he wasn't looking, I decided to swim across the pool, to the water slide where older children were clambering up the stairs and plunging into the deep end. Kicking off the concrete wall, I embarked on what felt like an epic journey, but about midway through I panicked, stretched my toes to touch the bottom and gulped a good cups worth of pool water.  For all the big-footed teasing I endured as a child, the big toes on my giant embarrassing feet would not touch the bottom.

For what seemed like years, I flailed my arms, gurgled chlorine and cried hot salty tears, a bold 5-year-old buckling halfway through her shitty plan. I remember clearly the stab of failure. It tasted like phlegm and chemicals. 

I don't recall if I cried for help or if someone else in the pool alerted my father of the blonde child without arm floaties taking in water faster than the Titanic. But when he came to get me, I remember he grabbed me under the arm pits and pulled me to the side of the pool, where I coughed sweet relief that hurt coming up.

I called my dad yesterday to ask him if he remembered this incident.  

"You saved my life," I said.

"That's what they pay me for," he replied. 

"But do you remember it?" I asked.

"You almost drowning? Nah," he said. "I remember teaching you girls how to swim in Myrtle Beach, but I don't remember a thing like that."

"I'm sure I wasn't drowning. I mean it felt like I was drowning, but it probably wasn't as big a deal to you as it was to me." 

"I tell you what," my dad said. "Same thing happened to me when I was about 6 years old. I was swimming in Lake Erie with David Koch and for whatever reason I started taking in water."

"Who rescued you?"

"David Koch. Pulled me right up out of the water."

"Do you remember it vividly?"

"You don't forget something like that," my dad said. "I remember it like it happened yesterday. Scared the shit out of me."

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PS. The picture above is of me without arm floaties. I'm on the offending water slide in Myrtle Beach, S.C. My father is waiting to catch me at the bottom.