1956, Johnssen’s Dam
Since the prompt for RDP is “Second,” I wrote the word into my search bar for my blog and this was the earliest hit that came up. I guess it was because it somehow detected that it was about the second time something happened in my life. At any rate, it was written over ten years ago about two events I had since totally forgotten about, so I decided I’d give it a second chance at publication. At the time I wrote it, I’d been at the beach for 7 weeks and early in that period, I’d spilled a Coke over my Mac computer, and in spite of attempts to rescue it, it had been declared unsaveable by a local tech guy. I was trying to write on a different computer which obviously I didn’t understand how to use, thus the notes below:
Two Saves
Okay, this is a reblog of a blog from January, 2015. The day’s WordPress Daily Prompt was Daring Do – Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?)
This was my response:
The prompt today, which I cannot copy here because I don’t know how to do it on the pc I have been using for the first time, or trying to, over these past two days since I murdered my (sob) Mac Air laptop, has something to do with some time when you have saved someone. After thinking long and hard, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to use the document software on the pc and then realizing I had no way to transfer it to my blog, anyway, I just decided that some power in either me or the universe (which is really the same thing) has decided that it is time for me to back away from technology for a time. If you don’t believe this, take into account that after both my Mac and my Kindle stopped working, then my phone did so also. Thinking it was probably that I needed to buy more time, I resolved to do so only to find that its charger has absolutely vanished from my life. I’ve turned the house upside down and it is nowhere. Ah well, I’ll concentrate on photography, thought I, then realized I had no place to put the photographs. After stumbling around for about 4 hours, I almost by mistake got them downloaded to this (devil) Acer pc, which promptly told me none had been downloaded. A few hours later, I stumbled upon them but have no idea how to get them onto my blog…and, deciding to just give up on writing or talking to anyone I know outside of my immediate proximity, I took camera in hand…only to discover that my camera, also, is absolutely unoperational. I think I wrote about this last night and sent it to a friend to post for me, but it was never received, so I won’t bore you with the details, other than that my camera has become a little turtle, constantly extending its head and neck only to withdraw them again, forever, until the battery wears out. Slip in a new battery and the same happens. I put it out of its misery, removed the battery and stuck it in a bag of rice, where it is keeping company with my Mac. Countless people tell me this is a remedy for waterlogged nonhuman entitites. I don’t know what is wrong with the camera, but that big bag of rice was sitting there handy, so why not? Anyway, this is why I am incommunicado and not posting . Instead, I made a salad and chicken soup for a dinner I’m giving for departing friends tonight and got in the hammock with a good book, dozing a bit just in time for a friend to come by, jar me awake and ask if I was sleeping, then depart (her, not me) for a walk up the beach. So, what does this have to do with saving anyone? Nothing. Just a chance to unload on someone other than Forgottenman, who has been bearing the brunt of my frustration. I do, however, have an answer to the question.
I have, in fact, saved two babies from drowning. One was at a housewarming party given by my boyfriend’s son in California in 1984. We’d all been given the tour, including the garden and hot tub, which was up on a raised patio out of view of the house. One of the couples had a two-year-old child and I noticed he was not with his mother. Looking in the other room, I saw he wasn’t with his father, either, and I suddenly had a strong feeling that something was wrong. I ran out of the house and into the garden just in time to see him at the top of the stairs leading to the hot tub. He walked over to the side, fell in and sank like a stone. I ran up the stairs, jumped in the hot tub and fished him from the bottom before he ever bobbed to the surface. I remember the entire thing in slow motion and have a very clear memory of the fact that it seemed as though his body had no tendency to float at all, but would have remained at the bottom of the deep hot tub. The parents reaction was shock. I can’t remember if they left the party or if they really realized how serious it was. I know they didn’t thank me, which is of no importance other than a measure of either their inability to face the fact that their child had been within seconds of drowning or simply their shock and the fact they were thinking only of their child.
Strangely enough, this had happened before, at a stock pond just outside of the little South Dakota town where I grew up. (I have found a photo of me swimming with friends in that pond, taken a few years before the described even, that I included above.) Everyone went swimming there, as there was no pool in town. When I was still in jr. high, I’d just arrived when I saw a very tiny girl—really just a baby—fall into the dam (which is what we called a pond) and sink straight down under the very heavy moss that grew on the top of the water. Her mother had her back turned, talking to a friend, and no one else noticed. I jumped in and fished her out, returning her to her mother, who quickly collected her other children and left. Again, no word of thanks. It is not that it was required, and I mention it here only because it happened twice and, having not thought about this for so many years, I am wondering if it wasn’t embarrassment and guilt on the part of the parents that made them both react so matter-of-factly.
For RDP the prompt is second.
