The Drowning Experience explained...

I said, in the earlier post, “There were two camps I remember most of all, Sightseeing Day Camp in Ellicott City, MD, and the camp at Har Sinai Temple, in Baltimore, although my actual drowning experience must have been at the YMHA Camp in Baltimore.

Let’s visit the drowning experience. It has left such a powerful image in my mind that it has effected the rest of my life. It may be the reason I can’t swim. It clearly is the reason I try never to be in water over my head, and still causes me bad dreams.

It must have been 1949 or 1950. It was my first day camp experience, and it was through the YMHA, the precursor to the JCC. I remember that we had to go on a bus to the “Y” for swimming, and the rest of the camping activities took place elsewhere, although I have no memory of any other event surrounding this one.

In those days, I was told, we didn’t go to swimming pools or beaches etc. because of the fear of polio. I know there was some kind of relationship, and it hampered any vacation my parents even thought about because you didn’t take kids swimming, at least not in my house. This all could have been an excuse, because they seemed willing to let me go swimming in camp.

So the set up is, I’m six, seven or eight years old, and a big kid to boot, so I look a bit older due to my size (height). The kids are all told to line up on the pools edge. I was in line with the rest of the kids, but unlike most of them, I’d never in my life seen a swimming pool. I couldn’t tell what was deep or shallow and had no reference point for that. I was standing, first in the line, at the edge of the shallow water, by the rope. I didn’t know it was (as I think about it now) probably five feet deep, maybe just over my head.

The camp councilor blows the whistle and yells, “Everyone jump in!”, and we did.

I hit the water and realized there was no bottom! I was floating around with my eyes open in a total panic! I couldn’t breath except to blow bubbles. I didn’t really understand what had happened but I was scared and I was screaming into the water! I can still feel it as I write about it and my breathing is labored now.

I assumed quickly that I would die, when there was an arm reached down and saved me! A lifeguard, I guess, reached in and pulled me up. I was chocking and smiling and crying, all at the same time.

I have no memory of the next time I went swimming.

One of the funny things that happened to me in life, was in 1978, I moved into a house with a swimming pool! All those panic stricken thoughts came back to me. We loved the pool; I just seldom ever used it.

If you remember the story I wrote a while ago, “The light has been shed”, June 8, 2009, about sex in my pool, you’ll see that others were happy to use it anyway.