If you got a second chance?

GP44

Member
I was drawn to water like a duck when I was younger.
Always swimming or fishing.
Sometimes you think that you saved lives but maybe they would have lived anyway by some last second miracle.
Most of the time you never hear anymore about a person you “saved” but I heard that one guy went to prison later for bank robbery.
It happened at a swimming pool when this other teen jumped right in on a hot day and I was easing down the ladder taking a little longer to get used to the cold water.
I was only about half way down on the ladder when he cramped up and his knees drew up to his chest.
Only three feet from the side in four foot of water.
I reached out and drug him over to the ladder and he held on until the cramps passed.
Then there was the little toddler who fell in below a dam and he had a floatation vest on but the current was taking him back up towards the dam.
The father jumped in and grabbed him and swam him to the side where he handed him to mom who took him right up the hill.
Then she went down to help hubby out because the concrete was slick where the waves washed up on it.
She went in too.
I ran the boat over to them and told them to hang onto the side while I backed the boat back down river to where they could get out.
That was one wet family that went home that day.
I can only remember five but I know there were six altogether that I helped out of the water.
It makes me feel like I had some self worth and maybe earned the second chance the doctors gave me with open heart surgery or when they cured my cancer.
 

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That's a beautiful story. I wish I had something like that to my credit;
One thing I learned so many years ago is that so many people will just stand around and watch someone drown like it is some kind of sport or show or something.
I just couldn’t do that.
But I didn’t go out of my way to look for people to help.
It all happened because I spent so much time fishing and stuff.
A couple of times I risked my own like and once told my little boy to sit down and stay right there while I went in to help a guy who fell in and his jacket had fallen down across his back so that he couldn’t move his arms enough to swim.
If I had it to do it over I don’t think I would risk my child’s life to save someone although everything turned out ok in the end it was a fool thing to do.
I never was celebrated as a hero or anything as a matter of fact I don’t remember even getting a sincere thank you!
You have to understand that when people are cold and wet and have just survived a traumatic experience they don’t dwell on how they survived. They are just happy to survive. That was good enough for me.
 


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