Fantasy at its best right? This is a photo of something that never happened. That is my father saving me from the jaws of a vicious alligator, while The Sister lends him some moral support. Obviously there's a photo of this, but it's all illusion. It is merely a sculpture of an alligator, its mouth agape, with me leisurely lounging inside with dad pretending to save me. However, I've been in some rather sticky situations in my life and I'm honestly surprised that I'm still alive to tell the tales. Over the past week, I've been culminating a list of the times where my life was going to meet a dire end. I've remembered six incidents. Meeting Bear Cubs So, my family started taking holidays to Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the spring after I was born. They'd heard of it from family friends and they trooped The Sister and my baby self up there and found the only hotel with a vacancy (because this tale was relayed every single trip as we drove by it). There was no baby bed, so they shoved me in an open drawer of the dresser. From that point on we spent a week every August exploring the mountains. Sometimes we switched it out for our spring break jaunt to Gulf Shores, but mainly it was August right before we were to return to school. Everyone's Cuckoo-ka-choo for wildlife there, especially bears. If they see one, they all stop and get out of their cars to snap off some photos, and sometimes decide it's OK to get too close. This is where our story really starts. I was three and we had been driving up winding roads in the mountains when we pulled off with fellow drivers. There were two bear cubs milling about. My dad's not one for rules or using his head. Just about during every visit, he'd step over guard rails, to get closer to the edges of mountains, though one is not supposed to be doing such things. On this occasion, he wanted to take a photo of his small daughter next to the bear cubs. I remember his hands in my arm pits lifting me up and then being put back down just a small bit away next to wild animals. They were slowly advancing and when one of them was about two feet from me it stood up on its hind legs. I remember thinking the entire ordeal was strange and I felt like it was a bad idea, but I didn't cry and I remember that the cub was so close I could smell it and it was a foreign and strange smell that made me alarmed. I remember the people being rather excited like I was part of some circus show. Some guy picked his blonde daughter up under the arms and deposited her near the other bear. I remember my mother panicking and nagging my father to get me out of there. Dad was trying to say it'd be fine, but then he was leisurely lunging forward and picking me up again and that was that. There are photos of the two bears floating around in this house somewhere, but it was before they were close enough to me. I'm sure bear cubs don't want to hurt little girls, but they are strong and if it had a mind to swipe at me I could have been seriously injured. Also mother bears are never too far off and they are crazy with motherly protection of their babies. She would have mauled and eaten all of us. The Near Abduction When I was really young I pretty much had the run of my house and neighbourhood. The Sister was at school and Dad was at work. Mom was around, but honestly I hardly ever saw her unless she was shuttling me out to the car to go to appointments or visit her friends. So on this particular sunny day, I know that my mom was in the house somewhere, but as always I couldn't find her. I wasn't one to enjoy sitting in the sun, but I did so want to be like The Sister who was forever "laying out". There were times later that I would join her on the deck and try to lounge quietly in a chair under the beating and relentless sun trying to get her to think I was cool. It was always horrible, but I'd try for a little bit at least. I'm not certain, but I think this is the first time I tried being like her in that regard. I was about four or five. I was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and lugged my child size folding chair out onto the front lawn near part of the yard by the side street. I unfolded the chair, sat down, and put on my blue plastic sunshades with little white kitty cats on the sides. I wasn't out there very long and it wasn't too hot yet, so I was still perfectly content. Our street also wasn't very busy when I was a child. It's now a thoroughfaire with almost non stop traffic whizzing by, but back then you were lucky to see ten cars putz past in a day. This older, avocado green car was driving slowly and pulled onto the side street. It was a two door and though I didn't know the age at the time, it was a seventies car in body and design (as well as the obvious paint choice). The car stopped next to me though I was about five feet into the yard from the road. The driver stayed at the wheel and this overweight guy with blondish red floofy hair and a beard lumbered out of the passenger door and was leering at me weirdly and extended his arms to me trying to coax me into his waiting arms, and ultimately the car. He did talk, but I don't remember what he said or what he sounded like. "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Danger!" or the equivalent was running rampant through my brain and my heart was beating in my chest like a bird in a cage. I needed to run, to get away, as quickly as possible. I'm sure my eyes were the size of saucers. I turned and ran at break-neck speed for the front door. I wrestled it open and slammed it shut as best as I could. I locked the bottom lock on the door knob but was entirely too short to see out of the peephole or to reach the chain. I clambered up onto the hall table as soon as the bottom lock was locked and kneeling there, I reached up for the chain and leaned out to latch it into the hole and slide it towards me. As soon as the chain was in the latch the door knob started shaking like someone trying to get in. I slid the chain silently into place and sat on the table with my legs to my chest so I could be as small as possible and not be seen from the windows in the dining or living room. I waited there for what felt like half an hour before I silently slid down and army crawled into the living room, hiding behind pieces of furniture to stay out of view of the windows until I reached the one facing the side street. I slowly lifted up and let my eyes see above the sill. The street was deserted. I'm sure that dude had run away as soon as the door was found to be locked, but I have no idea. After several hours my mom appeared from somewhere in the house and tried telling her what happened to me. She didn't believe me at all. I wasn't even a child who was prone to fancies. It's not like I always came to her with stories of near misses. If I fell outside and skint my knee I didn't mention it and kept playing. When I came home cut up from a day of playing, I'd shrug it off while she said, "What the hell happened to you?!" But she'd said that I'd made it up. I didn't even know of people trying to abduct children, as my mom wouldn't talk about that with me or within earshot for several more years; incidentally she would then relay my own story of how her "baby was almost abducted!" Apparently, according to her, I was almost abducted as a baby too. The Sister and her friend were wheeling me about in a baby stroller in the front yard. They were also playing and only half watching me. Suddenly a car stopped on the main road and some guy was out the side door making to snatch me up and The Sister and her Friend shouted and ran and pulled the stroller away and the car drove off. Obviously I couldn't believe this tale, as mom didn't believe me when it really happened to me, but later would use my story like she'd believed me the entire time. In my twenties I asked The Sister about this baby time incident and she said that yes, she remembered that day, and mom was telling the truth. Although, when I was younger, I did try to tell her and dad about that sunny day when they got home. Neither of them believed me either. The Undertow of Doom I'm a pretty fab swimmer. I can hold my own, generally (we'll discuss those two incidents in this post, as this is one of those.). In my baby time, our parents would take us to the local pool and mom would have me paddling the short distance back and forth between her and dad, or else holding on tightly to me. I wanted to be free. The summer after I turned one, I left her arms before we got into the pool and teeter tottered my way to the deep end. She stopped me. I kept breaking free from her and tottering towards the deep end and one day she just let me. I had finally reached my destination and jumped in and started paddling around like a turtle. The lifeguard was freaking out that there was a baby in the deep end. "Well, she was determined. If she drowns, then you can save her." replied my mom. Obviously I didn't drown and have been swimming in the deep end of pools ever since. But, this is not a pool story, sadly, as those are always happy. I was about six on this particular spring break trip to Gulf Shores. I wanted to go swimming. Mom and The Sister wanted to go shopping. Dad said he'd take me to the beach to swim. He found a lounge chair, settled himself in, said I was to stay near the shore where he could see me, and started reading whatever sci-fi book he was reading in 1987. I did exactly as he said. I went straight down the beach from where he was roosting, found a spot where he could see me, and stayed in 3 feet of water. I kept looking up to find him, and he was so submerged in his book, I doubt he would have realized if World War III broke out. But I was following the rules, so we were all good. I remember that I kept sticking my hands as deep into the sand as they would go and pulling them back up to see what came up besides sand. I also kept laying in the water, so my face would be under. Then I'm grasping at sand as I'm being pulled away from the shore. Grasping out into sand that is just sliding through my fingers and I didn't understand what was happening and it was slightly scary. But I kept my head about me and then popped up to the surface amongst a group of kids about my age or a little older. I was only a few feet from where I'd been. All was well. Everything was fine. I marched back through the water to my spot and resumed playing as best I could, checking to see if I was still in sight of dad. About five minutes later, I was grasping at sand again just sifting through my fingers. There was nothing to grab ahold of to keep me from the pull that was dragging me away from shore and out to see. I kept grabbing, and scrambling for anything of purchase, and I wasn't popping up again and I didn't know what to do except to keep swimming against it and reaching out for anything to hold onto. When I finally did pop up I was pretty far from shore. It hadn't taken long for the sea to drag me out past the large throngs of people. I popped up right beside a couple sharing a raft. They had their bodies in the water and just their arms holding them onto the sides of it so they could look at each other. I think they'd been kissing when I first popped up, but with my sputtering, the woman looked past her guy at me and her eyes grew big and then her turned around in surprise too. I remember she had a red bathing suit in a princess cut with no straps and her dark hair was permed into a circle around her head. I just remember being happy to see them. And then seeing that though I was pretty far out, not all was lost. Once I caught my breath, I swim back to shore, got out and stomped up to dad. "Dad! Dad! DAD!" and he turned away from reading almost unaware that he even had children. "Dad! Why weren't you watching me?!?" I got sucked out in the ocean and came up way out there by those people way way out there." He just looked at me like he was trying to remember where he'd seen me before. Then, "I told you to stay near the shore and not swim out." "I didn't swim out, I was sucked out!" "No, you weren't." and he went back to reading. I was gob-smacked. I didn't understand why he was taking this so lightly and didn't believe me. It stung to be honest, but it always stung when no one listened to me when I had really important things to say. Mom and The Sister believed me when they got back to the beach after shopping. Probably because it took them a while to rouse dad from his book and it was taking him awhile to recognize them too? I don't know as I was back in the water. Well, sitting with my butt planted into the sand of the shore, looking out to sea, with my feet in the water. Either that or mom was just pissy at dad that day. I'm pretty certain now that following dad's orders so restrictively is exactly why I got caught up in the undertow twice. And I'm fairly certain that my strong legs and swimming skills are what caused me to pop back to the surface again. See, one probably shouldn't lay horizontal in the water with their head facing land and their legs facing out to see. I think that is why it was easy to get trapped up in that. But I didn't know that at age six. Undercurrents Are Not Your Friend Which leads me to my second story involving water troubles. In the south, you "float the river". One can use a canoe, but mainly you set yourself in an inner tube and just lazily meander with a group of people down a local waterway on a hot summer day. It's like those lazy river portions of water parks I keep hearing about now a days. Only, this is out in the wild. My family had been going inner tubing for several years before this particular time when I was between the ages of eight and ten. I had always enjoyed it. I knew the rules, followed them, and had fun with everyone. The rules were pretty simple. Stay in your inner tube, except when we float over to a sand bank to get out of the water, in which case, when you can stand, get out and drag the inner tube to shore, making sure it's not still in the water. Check. Got it. The other important rule was stay in the current, follow the others, and do not go near the banks or the trees. There are snakes and it's dangerous. Check. Got it. Except, no one told you what to do when you think you're following the group and there's a completely different current dragging you away. We're all be-bopping along in the water and I'm watching the sky and talking with my friend and every once in awhile looking up to make sure we're still following, like ya do. If anyone started drifting towards (that's different than being pulled towards) a bank or group of trees, you just lazily paddled yourself away with your hands. Easy peasy. It had happened to all of us at one point or another. So, I'm drifting along. Look up and I'm still following mom so we're good. And just as quickly things had gone from bad to worse. I look back over to my friend and she's pretty far away from me. "Wait a minute." I was in the current. I was following mom. But wait, mom's looking like she's having a spot of bother now. She's flailing her arms and legs. I look back to my friend and up the line and realize mom is separated from the group. She's screaming, "Paul! Paul! Help!" and I realized she's slammed up into this whole group of trees and branches in the water. To make matters worse, I'm trying as hard as I can to get out of this new and dangerous current, but I'm not strong enough in this inner tubing position. I'm quickly flowing towards her. And slam! Now I'm stuck in all this mess. There's a pretty strong current here trying to suck everything underneath this tangle of branches. Mom is freaking the fuck out. Flailing, screaming, pushing me. I'm just trying to remain calm and by this point I've lost my inner tube as I was sucked out of it, and I have my arms wrapped around a branch and am kicking my little legs as best as I can so I don't go under. Dad is frantically making his way across the water to get to mom. I'm not sure if he realized that I was tangled up in this mess too, because he looked surprised when he saw me there. But he was also frightened because he'd run over here to save mom. It was a scary situation to find oneself in in the first place. You could be sucked under, and that's it. You're trapped with no way back up and you drown. However, a highly panicked person just makes it ten times worse. Mom wasn't a tiny person either. She was tiny as in 4 foot 9, but she wasn't slight. She was heavy. I'm sure dad knew he'd need all his strength to haul her out of a very strong current and her panicking would just make it that much harder for him. She just kept screaming and flailing and every time he tried getting her free she'd slip further into the current and under. Which by the way was knocking me all about and I just kept trying to stay calm and hang on and kick my legs. But he was having such a hard time saving mom and he was getting panicked and frustrated and he turned to me and forcefully pushed my head under the water. I was so shocked that my arms broke free of their meager strong hold and whoosh! I was gone. I was being sucked violently underwater and through all sorts of twisting limbs holding god only knows what horrors down there. Then I hit an impasse. I was blocked by something big. I was trapped. I wanted to cry, but couldn't. Then the water was sucking and pulling and my little body was dragged to the side of that through some other opening, and POP! I was up out of the water. I was probably only under a minute or two, but it felt like a lot longer. And I'm lucky that I was sucked all the way out and not completely trapped. I'm also lucky it didn't contort my body in such a a way as to break bones to get me through with the water that so desperately needed to finish its racing course. Once I was free and could swim back to the group, I did. Dad was finally pulling mom through the water to us. When they were on the shore of the sand bank, I went over there and demanded to know why he'd pushed me under the water. He just turned and glared at me and never answered. Then mom was flustering out this story about how I was stuck in the current and she came over to try and save me and got stuck and how basically this was all my fault, but she was the "good" mother for wanting to rescue her baby. "That's not true at all! I was following the group, I was following you. I ended up over there because of you!" And you probably guessed it, now one believed that either. No one even thought about it logically, that why would mom, being the woman that she is, suddenly turn around and then float against the normal current to save me? She wouldn't and they all knew that was her nature and character. She would have continued to follow the group in the normal current and called out for dad to go and save me. Besides the fact that my friend saw that I was inadvertently following my mom off course. We were both keeping tallies on our moms who were together talking. They were our guide sites so we stayed with the group. So, she and her mom both would have known that mom wasn't suddenly behind me seeing me float away, or that she was leaving the group to save me after having turned around (which she'd never done on a single floating trip). Yet, neither of them contradicted mom's story, except the friend, later, when no adults were near, said she knew I was telling the truth. "You could have spoken up at the time!!", I angrily shouted, which probably just made her never want to relive any of it again and made it certain she'd not tell our side of the story ever. Which I'm pretty sure she didn't. This Is My Rifle, This Is My Gun; One Is For Fighting, One Is For Fun So, I hadn't seen Full Metal Jacket when I was twelve, nor would I have understood what any of that meant. I shouldn't even use it now since I'm not a guy, but it's all that came to mind for the title of this incident. My parents had gone out one evening for a date. That did that a lot. They'd go have romantic evenings together eating at some restaurant or watching a flick at the cinema; sometimes even driving to the gravel pits to listen to birds. No really, you think my parents were making out, but they really are the type of people who would just go and listen to cranes and whiper wills and think it was romantic. I know, because they took The Sister and I to their parking spot so we could hear the birds too. But, I digress. I hadn't been allowed to stay home alone often before. But The Sister did not want to stay home taking care of her little sister who could fend for herself and miss out on 17 year old fun. I don't blame her. I was even looking forward to being left home alone, that is until... the intruder! So, it wasn't a real intruder, but I did not know that. I kept hearing this weird scratching, scraping noise. I had watched a lot of films where people used credit cards to jimmy locks open. That's exactly what it sounded like was happening. I looked through the peephole as best as I could and there was a person, hunched over, fiddling with the doorknob. I immediately recalled that sunny day when I was so young. Of that man trying to get into the house after me. It's not that I thought it was him, though I did think it was a guy, but someone was trying to get in. They were trying to jimmy their plastic in between the jamb and the door lock! I had to defend myself, and this was before Home Alone came out, even if only by one year or six months or so. I waited until I didn't see them at the front door anymore and then started rooting through the hall closet for one of dad's guns. I grabbed the first rifle that I came to, and knowing nothing about guns, I didn't check to see if it was loaded. I reasoned that if I couldn't pull the trigger, or something went wrong, I could just beat the person to death with the butt of my gun. So, I threw open the front door and stepped out into the night. "You here me! Robber person or whoever! I...AM...ARMED! You see this?! I'm not afraid to use this and I WILL protect myself!" After which point I patrolled the front yard holding the butt of the gun in my right hand with my left over my chest and keeping the rifle in place over my shoulder. I walked paces from one side to the other, a silent vigil for about twenty minutes and when no one turned up ready to fight, I went back inside. I took the rifle with me back into the den and laid it on the ground while I continued to watch the telly. My parents weren't due to arrive home for hours yet, but forty five minutes later they came bursting through the house. "Sarah? Sarah! Where the hell are you?! You better not have my gun!" 'How did they know...?! Did they hire the assasin?' Dad came in the den and saw the gun on the floor and his eyebrow shot up. It's a quirk of his where one eyebrow will raise in an arc and it means you are in super trouble now. It's never nice to see that or the hell freezing look that blazes across his face in accompaniment. He picked it up and started yammering on about how dangerous that was. "But dad, I had to!" But I was interrupted by my mother saying, "We had to rush home because we were told that our daughter was outside parading around the front yard with a rifle shouting like a crazy person. We knew that couldn't be true." My cheeks turned pink because well, this was awkward, but suddenly I said, "Who told you? How did you hear about it? Whose spying on me?!" My mom responded in an exasperated tone that our family friends had driven by and honestly I don't know what else she said, because this was before the days of mobile phones, so how had our family friends gotten a hold of them? I remember thinking at the time that mom's answer wasn't satisfactory, but I've forgotten the drivel she spilled out that night. I tried again to tell dad that someone was breaking into the house and I had to use the gun and make a show so they wouldn't come back. Of course he didn't believe me and said that no one would try to break in. Turns out later that they had to concede that I was partly correct. Someone had been trying to wedge something between the lock plates at the door and making all the scraping, scratching noises. There, indeed, was someone hunched over that night fiddling with the door knob and making it jiggle around. However, it turned out to be The Sisters' friend, a girl too and not a boy, and she'd been trying and successfully shoved a note in between the door at the lock plates, but it was taking her a long time. The note was found off in the bushes where the force of my throwing the door open fluttered it away. They thought I was stupid for reacting as I did and parading around with a rifle on the front lawn screaming like a crazy person, but at least I wasn't in trouble and they believed me since the events had actually happened, even if it wasn't entirely correct. They told The Sisters' friend not to leave notes like that at the door anymore. Not because it was frightening for a child, but because I was too simple and excitable to handle such a thing. Perhaps I shouldn't have grabbed for a gun, but I'd already had a traumatic experience and who the hell tries for 15 minutes to shove a note there, when they could just have easily and quickly lifted the door knocker, put the note there and laid the door knocker back down? Hmm? Hmmm?!? Am I right? Plus, I never cried or whined or peed myself and I didn't hide in a closet or cower. I was pretty calm about the entire ordeal and decided I needed to do something to get the people to leave. What twelve year old wouldn't think the people might be watching from somewhere out in the darkness? I think I made a pretty level headed decision, based on my earlier experience and my age, and the lack of adults present. But, as far as the gun, I say I'm lucky. My dad has quite a few pistols and rifles. I knew not to touch them, and he never taught me about them or trained me with them, and I wouldn't have touched any except ya know it really did seem like some guy was going to break into the house. But, he probably had five rifles in that closet that night and I'm lucky that the first one I reached for was only a b.b. gun instead of the other four which were loaded. Not that a b.b. gun can't do damage, but it's far less likely that you'll die by b.b. gun accident than a .22. I am surprised that this event turned out so well. What if I'd grabbed a loaded .22 and it fell or I'd accidentally pulled the trigger (even though I was keeping my fingers away from that area just to be safe)? My parents had been worried that that would happen too, only they hadn't been worried for my safety, because all I heard was, "But what if you'd shot poor *insert The Sisters' friends name here*? It would have been tragic. You should be glad she wasn't still around, you would have spooked and shot her." *rolls eyes* Such loving and wonderfully concerned parents, right? The Curve of Near Death
As a teenager, once I received my driving permit, you couldn't keep me out of a vehicle. A driving permit is only intended for use when someone over the age of twenty one accompanies the permit holder. This never happened. My parents didn't care. They wanted a run to the store and didn't want to go, so they sent me out alone. If I showed up five hours later when I only went out to purchase milk, they didn't care. It was freeing and exhilirating and I'm lucky I didn't kill myself or others. Lesser incidents include slamming on the breaks and causing a car or two behind me to swerve, because I was not going to run over this mother cat and her kittens that were in the street. If I'd been driving like a real person and not a teenager on high adrenaline I wouldn't have been speeding out of control in the first place in order to slam on said breaks. Another time, I had dropped something in the floorboard and leaned over to retrieve it. I don't remember what it was, but it certainly wasn't worth dying for. By the time I righted myself back again behind the wheel, I had mere seconds to swerve back in my lane and not be slammed into by an oncoming truck. No, of course I couldn't hear their frantic honking, as I'm sure that was happening, because my music was so loud aliens were rocking out to it on Mars. However on one gloomy day in my teens I was driving back roads that I'd never been on before. A new adventure awaited around every corner. The music was blaring, my cares were set free, and I was blissfully unaware of just what was lurking there in my near future. The road was fairly straight and I could see that it kept going for some distance into a tree-lined area. But as I neared it I realized that the sign I'd just passed said 20 MPH, and there was a sharp curve of asphalt to the left. The road that I had seen was just a dirt drive off to who knows where and wasn't the actual road at all. Decisions were made quickly and I turned the steering wheel to a hard left just in time to keep my wheels on the pavement. Only I'd been going close to 45 MPH, and the car tipped onto the two right wheels and then the car came back down and I swerved into the other lane and back into mine again. It's weird how all of it happened so fast, so breathtakingly quickly as to probably only last 20 seconds, but during the turn and the following results time seemed to slow up and move as if I were in a dream. As soon as I was back in my lane, I stopped the car, because no one was behind me. Nor was anyone else on the road. I realized that I'd stopped breathing at some point and started gulping in lungfuls of air and trying to settle my heart rate back down. I have to chalk this one up not to intelligence or skills, nor even instinct. I think it was pure dumb luck that I survived that near roll over taking that curve like I did. It's like the video game player who doesn't understand exactly what the buttons do to formulate the proper attacks, she just furiously jabs at all of the buttons simultaneously until her character is up and moving and doing something that resembles an attack (with her friends grumbling and bitching about her lack of button moves). I am that video game player and I was pretty much that driver that day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
Categories |