The apartment we lived in had an in-ground swimming pool.  I was 3, maybe 4 years old.  I played too close to the edge one day.  I dared the water.  I knew better.  I fell in and the water sucked me up, softly.  It suspended my fall somewhere between daylight and the off-white bottom where the boomerang shaped reflection of the waves bounced against each other.   My cousins splashed at the other end of the pool.  I opened my eyes and saw their legs dangled below the blow-up rings they floated in, and the gray bubbles race quickly down with their arms beneath the surface as they splashed.  I watched the bubbles race each other back up to where they belonged.  I saw three stairs leading to the glistening light.  Too far.

I remembered my oldest cousin and the submarine game he liked to play.  He’d swim just under the surface and hold his hand above the water.  To signal the next submergence, he’d hold up three fingers, then two, then one.  And down he would go, into the depths of the sea.  So, it’s what I did.  I sank slowly.  Three fingers.  I feared I wouldn’t have enough time for both the two and then one, so I sped up.  Two fingers.  My hand was almost completely under.  One finger.

Water rush into my nose and down my throat.  I closed my eyes.  A tightness closed around my arms.  My body heaved, pressured against the water, and rushed back into daylight.  I choked for air.  The pungent taste of chorine filled my mouth as the water spewed from inside.  I looked up.  My father held me.  I coughed and choked.  He wore a white and brown plaid short-sleeved camp shirt.  It looked two-toned because the bottom half was soaked and the top half dry.  His brown slacks dripped.  I coughed.  I felt embarrassed; it was my fault his clothes were wet.

True story.