Drowning

Drowning  (E) Contest Entry Writer's Cramp Based on a true story #2162773 by Chris Breva

551 words

Life savers are warning: Put away your smartphone, while visiting the beach with young children.

You are on the beach and see a child, all alone, crying for its parents. What happens? The above sentence in red must be used in your story or poem, bold it for tomorrow's judge.

All entries must not exceed 1,000 words for stories or 40 lines for poetry. Your word or line count MUST appear in your entry post in the Cramp forum.

I went with my ex-wife to go swimming one day. I had no desire to swim because she was going to the Ohio River to swim in a spot locally known as "the beach" because it was a wide sandy swath of land that spanned that area of the river. The water was shallow along the shore line but became deep pretty rapidly. The area was just south of the Willow Island Locks and Dam and the dam kept the water levels fairly low in the summertime. Our neighbor decided she wanted to go as well and she had two daughters. One daughter was a preteen and the other daughter was a toddler. I had objected to where they wanted to swim but being outvoted decided to tag along and play life guard. This was a fortunate decision on my part.

Cellphones were new at that time. The technology had just been introduced and Internet capabilities by cellphone were just starting to become a reality. Thus those who were fortunate enough to afford a cellphone were often found either texting away or doing other cellphone related activities. My neighbor was one such person. She had just obtained a cellphone and was very distracted by it. Thus when her toddler began ambling toward the water she didn't see her. Fortunately I was watching and saw the child by the riverbank. I yelled for somebody to get her but over the racket of people already yelling and having fun nobody paid any attention. I covered the one hundred yards between the child and I as fat as my legs would carry me and dove into the water fully clothed to extract the baby. I think my acttions scared the child more than the water did because she had a fit when I drew her from the water. She could not have been in the water more than a few seconds and started screaming as if I were killing her. By this time her mother realized what was going on and bolted that direction, thanking me profusely for watching out for the little girl. I told her it was nothing anybody else would not have done. We were still talking as I felt something grab my leg in the water and begin pulling me toward the depths of the river. I pulled my leg free with a lot of effort and realized that my leg had just been captured by an undertow. If it had occurred thirty seconds earlier the little girl would have been caught in it and dragged out into the river. Had that occurred my efforts would not have been rescue but likely recovery! I have not been swimming in the river or for that matter very many other places since even though I am a proficient swimmer having taken swimming lessons in middle school.

The incident was never reported to the authorities as it did not seem all that important. However somebody, I believe it was the child's grandfather, heard about it and reported it to the local newspaper. One ofmy superior officers in the Civil Air Patrol read the story in the newspaper and wrote me up for a Lifesaving Award, which I never received. I declined it because the incident had not been heroic. It had simply been a matter of getting wet and was later over dramatized. However it did teach a clear lesson about being distracted by a cell phone when children are near open waters!