So folks, I have decided to try something new… I participate in a monthly story-telling competition known as “Foxtales” in my relatively new home town of Foxborough, Massachusetts. The stories are supposed to be about seven minutes long and they are akin to the internationally known “Moth” tales. (The name “Moth” tales originated in the state of Georgia when families would gather around a floodlight on hot summer nights to tell stories. Moths would hover around the spotlight, hence the term “Moth” tale). This months theme was “water”. Below is the story I told on the topic of water. Next month’s topic is “Rock ‘N Roll”…but for now, make sure you drink plenty of water! My story follows…
“After already losing an hour of sleep last Sunday morning because of daylight savings time, I was awakened at 4am by an annoying, high pitched shrill noise coming out of a maintenance closet in my apartment. Now, losing sleep is always a real pain in the ass, but that was nothing next to the sinking feeling Ivone and I got when she went to make our coffee and learned that we had no running water! Luckily, I had a few of these bad boys in reserve so we had enough water for our Sunday morning coffee! I have a public service announcement for you…when you are ill and the doctor says “drink lots of fluids” they mean water, not “twisted tea!…More on that later!
It was no accident that I had the water bottles in the apartment as I take drinking water very seriously. Just ask the students and teachers at the Ahearn Middle School, I am always carrying a bottle of water with me throughout the day. I drink 2 and ½ of these before lunch and 1 and ½ of them after lunch. But how much water is enough? I’ve heard 8 – 8 oz glasses, but how do you measure that. Simple. I did an experiment which is documented on my blog site where I proved that one oz of water is roughly equal to one gulp of water. No kidding.
Ok, so let’s talk about water, water! Everybody knows from early childhood geography classes that 75% of the earth is covered by water. That’s why we have a damned navy, to protect all of that water! I grew up in Michigan, which is surrounded by the Great Lakes, but the most important water to me growing up was “Connie’s Pool.” When I was in elementary School, Connie, my middle-aged next-door neighbor, got divorced and needed her lawn mowed in the summer. I offered to mow her lawn if I could use her in-ground pool. She had a cool riding lawn mower and I felt like a bad-ass driving that tractor around making her property look good.
I remember on my tenth birthday Connie let my mom use her pool for my birthday party. About 10 neighbor kids were at Connie’s pool and we decided to find out who could dive to the bottom of the deep end of the pool (8ft) and collect the most golf balls off the bottom of the pool in one trip (which meant one breath). I had practiced this stunt before, and was determined to win the competition with my neighbors on my birthday. It was not an easy feat, but my trial dives had taught me exactly how much oxygen I could expend at the bottom before it was time to come up for air. The trick was to collect and then launch (spring up) and gasp for air just after breaking the surface. That was easy to do when practicing as I was the only one in the pool. What I didn’t plan for on Connie’s Pool game day was the other ten or so kids in the pool, some of which would put their rear end in an innertube and float on the water top all over the surface of pool. Do you see where this is going? Yup, you guessed it. At my 10th birthday I experienced the scare of my life. After I collected a record number of golf balls, I set myself in the launch position, and then launched straight up into somebody’s butt that was in the middle of a floating innertube in the deep end of the pool. I had no breath left and couldn’t surface… I gasped for air and got water and thought I would drown before I was rescued by some neighbors, pulling me out of the pool while I coughed up water all the while feeling like an idiot.
It was on that day in August 1964 that I decided I wanted nothing to do with Top Gun training, or the Navy for that matter.
As I grew up, I avoided swimming and wanting nothing to do with water, so I decided to apply to Army West Point to train as a foot soldier, securely located on dry land…Well, NOT SO FAST SANDERS…. the navy still had a claim on my future!
Does anybody know what a “Higgins boat” is? Yup, that’s right, they were the boats that delivered the soldiers to the Normandy Beaches on the D-Day attack during WWII. Remember those actual photos from “Saving Private Ryan” showing the door opening and the soldiers rushing out into the water?
Soldiers facing “exit” door in Higgins boat
Many soldiers became victims of German gunfire as the gate opened. But one little known fact is how many men drowned because they were dropped off in water that was way over their head. They were bogged down with the full weight of their gear which included rifles, ammunition, and heavy cans of food meant to last days.
Why am I telling you this? Because, despite going to the school which focused on ground warfare, the cadets at West Point, thanks to the lessons of the Normandy Invasion, must successfully pass a course known as “Survival Swimming.” When I heard about this, I realized my whole professional life would soon depend on my ability to overcome the fear of water. At the Military Academy, we learned a technique of how to survive in deep water known as the “bob and travel” whereby you sink to the bottom, squat like a catcher, lean forward, and then spring forward, hopefully strong enough to reach the surface, bringing your knees up, before sinking straight back down, repeating until you could walk on the bottom with your head above water. I faced my fears right away and usually volunteered to go first. I successfully completed bob and travel training and then had to face the final exam, which happened to be the scariest part of survival swimming training.
Welcome to the army boys, you will now put on full gear and step into the deep end from a ten-meter board and make your way to the bottom and then swim to the other side of the pool. The academy trainers ensured we would not drown by tying a rope around our waist that they held on to in case we needed to be pulled to the surface. I volunteered to go first. But right before I stepped off the high dive, I had flashbacks to my tenth birthday and realized it was time to grow up. I stepped off, waited three airborne seconds before taking a deep breath, hit the water and sunk to the bottom. I swam like hell, surfaced, and survived! BTW, one’s nervous instinct is to hold your breath the moment you step off the platform. All that does is force you to take the next breath as you are hitting the water, not a good idea!
Earlier I told you about my one gulp per ounce “experiment” and my precise “no less than” amounts of water I drink every day. Well, I learned the hard way less than six months ago just how important water is to our survival when I was raced to the ER in an ambulance after suffering “stroke-like” symptoms. They tested me with a CT scan, Brain MRI, a corroded Artery Exam, and an Echo Cardio Exam, all showing no evidence of what had caused my “stroke-like” symptoms. Upon further review and through the process of elimination, it was determined that my little episode was due to dehydration, which, as you all know, is what happens when you don’t drink enough water. Also, alcohol consumption contributes to dehydration, so those twisted teas I had had the night before didn’t help my case. So, friends, I have cut my alcohol consumption to near zero now and drink plenty of water.
So, I say, drink up! Excuse me folks, the colonel of the urinal needs to visit the latrine!”
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