Tell us about a bullet you’re
glad you dodged — when something awful almost happened, but didn’t.
What comes to mind for this prompt happened to a little girl I had just
met at the pool down the street from where I grew up. When I was a pre-teen, I was offered a job to
teach swimming at the pool where I learned to swim myself. Ms. Soroti lived across
the busiest street from my neighborhood, California St. I rode my bike over there early each week day
morning in the summers to introduce water to the preschoolers who were bussed
to the pool in her backyard for swim lessons.
Even though the pool had heating, she would never run it in the summer
when we taught, and it was ALWAYS super cold in the early hours of the
day. We dreaded hopping in, but we did,
and we spent the morning picking up one preschooler at a time off the side of
the pool while encouraging them to blow bubbles and kick their legs in the
water as we pulled them around the shallow end.
This particular day one of my closest friends had brought a family
friend’s daughter to the pool, and we were the last ones left after the preschool
swim sessions ended. The two of us were visiting with Ms. Soroti when all of a
sudden I turned away from them and saw my friend’s toddler charge in the pool.
She could not yet swim. She was struggling, arms flailing. I moved quickly to
pull her out of the water and keep her from drowning. It’s amazing how quiet
danger in the water can be. None of us
even saw or heard her climb in, and before we knew it she got too far away from
the side and almost drowned, without making a sound. Once Ms. Soroti and my
friend saw what happened, they were surprised and glad too that I had seen her in
the water just in time. It was most
scary for the little girl I pulled out of the water, but she was okay and
learned that day how dangerous it can be to get in the water without a “big
person” and especially when you don’t know how to swim.
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