A few years ago as I was re-watching a favorite child hood science fiction TV series, I caught a line about death being, "the one talent we all share." It made me chuckle and still does, but then of course, I am not in danger of dying immediately as far as I know. For those of us who still possess a reasonably robust constitution, death is not something you ponder regularly, or actively avoid as a conscious act. Rather, despite being surrounded by plenty of examples of death at work, we generally take our fragile life for granted. Death operates on its' own time frame and tends to sneak up on you, whether you're ready or not.
Strangely, there are those calling cards, those near death experiences as some people call them, where death makes brief courtesy calls before paying you a permanent visit. Most of us have experienced them, or several of them, in a life time. I recall my foster sister coaching me across an intersection in that strange no-mans land between changes in the light sequence. She called me to cross from the other side of the street. The peripheral vision of a five year old is all but useless, so trust was placed in the older sister who was barely a teenager herself. I heard the roar of an engine, the squeal of tires and saw the white hood of a Ford Anglia, whose mass, effortlessly flung me onto my sprawling hands. The hot road baked in the afternoon sun, skinned my palms and knees. I escaped being run over and left the scene with bruises and a fear for crossing roads that was to last for years to come.
Only recently while traversing an intersection, a left turn on green, and my wife at the wheel, something made me look to the right. A black Mitsubishi Eclipse, I gauged correctly, was not going to stop for the red light it had. My wife admits that the blas way in which I announced, "Watch out for this guy," pointing a finger, was almost as unnerving as the speeding Eclipse which ripped through the intersection within feet of us. Perhaps as the driver she felt it more, and as she noted, a few feet more and I would have taken the full force of the side on impact. Now, any reckless maneuver we see on the road is oft accompanied with the "Watch out for this guy [gal]" remark. These small events, however, pale into insignificance compared to another more frightening experience which occurred to me many years earlier.
It was one of those school trips at primary school, where a hundred of us were bundled into a bus and hauled, on a wet winter's day, into the grey oblivion of the city. The destination for hours of fun excruciatingly planned by the teaching supervisor's, was a large public swimming pool. I was quite comfortable with the shallow concrete structure which sufficed as an open pool back at the primary school, but the oceanic expanse of water that greeted me after changing was a thing of awe. My friends and older peers in the group seemed bereft of any of the fears I possessed and flung themselves with enthusiasm at the inviting pool. We were all thrust into an enormous section of the pool and told to keep well away from the public who were swimming laps.
Although I had been in large pools before, I was not a strong swimmer and the warnings of the teachers about the enormous depth of the dreaded deep end, was absorbed by me with particular poignancy. I was abandoned by my friends as a worthless addition to their fun and felt somewhat rejected as a pathetic and scrawny infant at the tame end of the pool. Loneliness and boredom eventually oppressed me to a point where I embarked on a rather stupid decision to join in on the fun of some older boys I knew.
Having got out of the shallows, I wandered a little up the side of the pool to where this group of boys was re-enacting spectacular James Bond style deaths. In the sanitized world of the 2000's, re-enacting drowning deaths in the pool seems like pure folly. However, this was the early 80's and children who cut off their hands in the band saw were hauled before all with bloodied stump to demonstrate their Darwinian imbecility. As a warning to others, maimed, burnt or injured children provided effective deterrents to us all in wide eyed terror. If that failed, there was always corporal punishment. Nevertheless, no parent or teacher, to my knowledge, had intervened in the harmless frolicking by the pool's side. Besides, the boys in question were all good swimmers and renowned for their common sense. I dived in after the appropriate prompt and the lack of a bottom I could touch with my feet immediately caused panic.
While I could tread water, somehow the sheer panic of being out of my depth provoked an immediate abandonment of training or reason. I gulped water and the surge of panic which hit me when I had plunged in quickly rose to overwhelming terror. I thrashed uncontrollably to the surface gurgling and spluttering, completely disorientated and unable to get clean air into my lungs. The more I tried, the more I inhaled water and my screams and frantic flailing of the water were ignored as part of the game. The whole incident was probably only seconds, but when you're trying desperately to gather fresh air seconds have a way of becoming rather long. There was a kind of duality going on during this experience, as part of me was frantically fighting to stay afloat and get the air I needed, yet my brain was also doing something else.
In retrospect I suspect this was adrenalin flooding my system and conducting my physical survival responses in a fairly primitive manner. At the same time and indeed as time progressed in those precious seconds, a higher order within my brain was rationalizing what was happening to me. The experience was frighteningly surreal. I was able to absorb the sensations around me, the lack of oxygen, my arms thrashing and the sounds of my gurgling cries. I strained in agony at the nearby people sitting in the stands painfully unable to attract their attention and yet my brain was rationalizing. As I became weaker I started to resign myself consciously to the situation I was unable to get myself out of.
There was no pain, indeed, if anything there was a state of bliss amidst the panic, and again I look back and think: here was the effect of oxygen deprivation kicking in. Still, I began to recognize that this might be it and I wasn't exactly ready for the concept. I recall vividly asking God - having been raised in a religious home God seemed quite relevant at this moment - "This is it, isn't it? Okay, God? Is this it? I think this might be the end, I'm going to drown here." My body still fought on and I wondered where the help was, but I could feel myself becoming overwhelmed by the water and the inability to get oxygen into my lungs. "I'm drowning" I thought rather calmly, despite my clawing arms, and things started getting rather hazy and surprisingly comfortable. It was almost as though I was no longer a complete participant.
Rescue came in the voice of one of the other boys and the effect spurred new energy. He had recognized that I was not acting and in fact drowning. I heard my name and even though I couldn't see him, I could hear his voice calling me, giving me instructions. Then I felt him grapple me. Here I was grateful for being scrawny, although I think he begged me to stop thrashing. My memory at this point gets a little sketchy, but he managed to wrestle me back to a handrail on the side of the pool. I grasped it tightly, coughing and spluttering, exhausted and terrified, despite my earlier resignation to the possibility of drowning. He asked me multiple times if I was alright and eventually helped heave me out of the pool where in a state of shock I coughed my lungs out.
I remember looking around and was utterly and indignantly furious that no one in charge had noticed my desperate pleas for help, nor even the rescue itself. There was no one to ascertain whether I was actually okay, this was definitely the 80's I had described earlier. Perhaps the whole incident hadn't looked that bad, but from my perspective it was horrific. I was often in trouble as a child and perhaps my antics were put down to me fooling around. I managed to haul myself together and found my towel which was some comfort to me since it was a deliciously dry object.
I barely remember getting changed for the journey home, but it was a somber and weirdly lonely ride home. It was as though only I and those who helped rescue me were aware of how close I was to drowning. Certainly if I was floating face down in the pool there would have been a response, but that seemed too little too late for my mind. It was a strange experience for a kid of that age. I don't remember handling it particularly well and was probably a little surly for the rest of the day. The boy who saved me was called Paul, and his friends responded to my grumpiness with suggestions I should have been left to drown. This of course was deeply hurtful, but since no one had talked us through it, how were boys of that age meant to respond?
There was no fairy tale ending where Paul and I became fantastic friends or anything like that. Being older than me, he and his friends moved in different circles, but I was naturally, never ungrateful to him. It was many years later when I recognized Paul at university that polite exchanges were made. We never discussed the incident in great detail there was a common understanding and respect between victim and deserving hero. I am convinced I owe him my life and this was as close as I got to a near death experience, that strange talent we all share.