Oceans
When i was younger i lived close to the Pacific Ocean, in areas where the ocean floor dropped off quickly and tides and currents were erratic and deadly. We went to the beach quite often, and i enjoyed playing in the sand and the surf (i owe my lack of fear of water to my mother, but that's another story). I had heard many tales of other people's children that had gotten pulled under by the tide and swept out to sea, never seen again, or of people who had hit their head on the reef and drowned, but never thought it would happen to me; perhaps it seemed the most ridiculous thing to die of in the places i was living.
One afternoon we were at the beach in El Salvador, i must have been around 11. I was walking by myself with my feet just in the water, when a large wave came and toppled me over, pulled me into the ocean, and pushed me down. I blacked out for a bit, and when i came to i was under water and my head hurt a lot. Luckily the current was pushing me upwards at that moment, i had only hit my head on the sand, and i wasn't out that long as i still had air in my lungs. I reached the surface and swam back towards the beach in a half-dazed, half-awake state. My head wasn't too badly bruised and no one found out about the incident. I remember it as the day i learned that the tide is your friend for only so long.
It took me a few more years to realise that also applied to people.
One afternoon we were at the beach in El Salvador, i must have been around 11. I was walking by myself with my feet just in the water, when a large wave came and toppled me over, pulled me into the ocean, and pushed me down. I blacked out for a bit, and when i came to i was under water and my head hurt a lot. Luckily the current was pushing me upwards at that moment, i had only hit my head on the sand, and i wasn't out that long as i still had air in my lungs. I reached the surface and swam back towards the beach in a half-dazed, half-awake state. My head wasn't too badly bruised and no one found out about the incident. I remember it as the day i learned that the tide is your friend for only so long.
It took me a few more years to realise that also applied to people.
posted by francisco at 1/13/2005 06:40:00 PM
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Addendum:
American Overseas School of Rome, the high school i went to for 11-12th grade, had a special event that 11th graders had to go through: 11th grade declamations (do all schools, or perhaps just all private schools, have some special event that it believes distinguishes itself from the rest?). Each Junior had to memorize a piece of literature that was at least 14 lines long.
I chose a bit from the Bible (Revelations: and i saw heaven open, and behold a white horse, and he who sat upon it was called faithful and true - basically "and" followed by 4-10 words; i'm pretty sure the Bible was written by a intelligent agent backed by an NLP(revelations was probably just Naive-Bayes)-generated DB), but that's not important. What is important is that Mike chose the first poem he found that was both repetitive and exactly 14 lines long - hey hey the cheapest stuff is all i need, after all.
I remember neither the title of the poem nor the poet, and i'm not even sure if i correctly remember the one line that i think i remember of Mike's chosen poem:
If we must die, let it not be like pigs to the slaughter.
The strength of that sentence was enhanced after i spent a night in a truck stop surrounded by semi's hauling trailers of pigs off to their ends; ain't nothin' like surround sound squealing.
...
I never stopped going to the beach, and while i don't think i take many risks with my life, i think of that phrase each time the ground starts to shake, or the temperature dips below 10DEGF on my ride home, or i confront my boss, manager or family about a bad decision of theirs, or my legs start to twitch after a long hike in altitude, or i'm trying to decide whether or not to Go For It, or pretty much any event that takes a little bit extra determination or guts.
Well, that and a phrase i heard on an HBO Vietnam show from the 80's, where one soldier is trying to calm his friend who is standing on a mine, by chanting, "It ain't worth a thing not a thing not a thing".
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