Personal Narrative: The Time I Almosed Drowned

At first it was nice and calm till I looked down, and I was there shocked. There were so many sharks and sting rays. I looked up and kept swimming forward and telling myself nothing bad will happen to you Mhari, nothing. After calming down some I looked down and nothing that bad. I brought my head up and took a big

As far back as I can trace my memories I remember that as a child I always liked to be in the water. Swimming pools were my absolute favorite. Wherever I went, I would always ask if there was a swimming pool. However, things changed when my parents took me to Florida for the first time. When I looked out onto the ocean my parents told me that the first words that came out of my mouth were, “Look mom, dad it’s a huge swimming pool!” I bet anyone can guess what happened next; I took off on a mad dash right into the ocean. The thing is, it was nothing like a swimming pool, but it seemed so much better. Over time, I became fascinated with all of its characteristics and still, I am

I woke up nauseous, too sick to eat. The whole drive there I was praying it would be cancelled. The fear consumed me; I couldn’t move. I just wanted to be home in my warm, comfy bed, instead I was diving into an ice cold pool. After warm-up my coach gave me a pep talk, but I was too nervous to listen. Sometimes I got so nervous I’d throw up, right before my event. To this day I still don’t understand why I got so anxious at swim meets. For the past several years, I have had a love hate relationship with swimming. I always struggled with swimming, and many times I wanted to quit. The time commitment and the physical requirements have always been a little too much for my mind to handle and it all comes to a crescendo when it is time to compete. I often wondered why I continued to put

I dove through the cold currents, feeling my hands create an opening through the water. I closed my aching eyes and let the water submerge me, pulling me in. The sun cast shadows on the floor of the pool, shifting every now and then. I could feel the warmth of the sun as I swam further. I sighed, deeply content.

I am known to be extremely clumsy. With that, it’s expected that I often end up in awkward situations. In the past I have called numerous teachers “Mom,” fallen down while walking up stairs, almost fallen off a cliff; and it can be assured there were many more instances where my embarrassing clumsiness had led me into awkward, sometimes life threatening, situations. One moment that stands out in particular takes place in every marine animal welfare activists’ “favorite” place, Sea World.

Attempting to distract myself from the fear that was slowly consuming my body, I turned my head towards the Raritan Valley Community College Pool (RVCC), one

I listened and did as he said. I pushed forward and started my way down the steep slide. The force of the water carried me forward at a fast speed and I was thrown down the slide. I opened my eyes and saw that I was no longer touching the slide, but flying above it. The wave of water had thrown me so fast that I was in the air over the slide. I closed my eyes in fear and I hit the slide with a bang! I slid right into the pool with a big SPLASH. Half a second later I was submerged in the blue liquid terrified, wondering if I was hurt. I sank to the bottom, then shot up off of the ground with my feet pushing towards the air above. I wasn't the best swimmer, but I made my best effort to swim to the side of the pool and to safety, I looked around for my Mom, as I looked around I noticed the lifeguard watching me just in case. I made it to the side and pulled myself out of the pool. My mom asked me if I was okay. I told her I was fine and we continued through the day and eventually

Once I was afraid of bodies of water since I did not know how to swim, now I am in love with any activity that has to do with water. I was raised in the Dominican Republic, a caribbean island, where it is customary to throw one’s child in the deep end of a pool so that their natural instinct of swimming is awakened. I was not the case. My mother pushed me to the water and amazingly enough I did not panic. Instead of panicking, I accepted my fate and sunk down. After about 30 seconds in my cousin dove in a took me out. Once out of the water, I began to panic. Consequently, I began crying, shaking and screaming at my mother for throwing me into the pool. Shortly after that my mother placed me in swimming classes and everything changed.

I'm going to pirates cove for an hour of my time i’m super excited I can’t wait to go there because I haven’t gone in a while,after a few minutes of driving were finally here my dad,mom,and brother. When I got inside in pirates cove I went to the diving board I was surprised how much people were waiting to use the diving board so instead I went to hang out by the pool for a few minutes. After hanging out by the pool I went to check on the diving board the line was a little short so I just waited, finally when it was my turn I tried to jump as high as i possibly can, i went so deep in the pool it felt forever to get up from the water after the diving board I went to the slides when i got to the slides there was another line but bigger but i

My tone toward the subject is confused and guilty while my attitude is more hopeful. My tone is displayed when I use a metaphor to say that “I’m drowning in a sea of disappointment”, it shows that that the guilt is consuming me. My attitude is more hopeful because I say that “they were manipulated”, so they might not recognize what they do. I would show examples of what I did like “refuse to speak in their native tongue”. After each example I would say “Was this their dream” to display my confusion and guilt I had when I did not meet their expectations. I repeated that question often, I did this so that they audience would understand the effect that these “dreams” or expectations had on me. Throughout the poem I use the word “dream” often

Then, something in my mind sparked, as if I had storage of unseen strength. I looked at the bottom of the pool, and I saw a flashback of when I first learned how to swim two years before, at the age of fourteen. I had all of these visions of successes in the past regarding life around aquatics and realized that giving up this opportunity would be like giving up everything that I had worked so hard for.

The timing couldn't be worse! It's really hot and you're keen to go for a swim and the pool is green!

13 years. It has been 13 years since I first plunged into the pool to begin my first lesson. I was small, skinny, and shy at the time, not willing to talk to people. I had tried other sports; baseball, soccer, basketball, but I found those to difficult. My dad first brought me to a pool, to splash around in the play area. But I soon found myself wanting to go the deeper parts where the whirlpool and the lazy river were. So I began group lessons on the basics on how to swim, most of the other participants were older than me so I did not make conversation with them. After I finished a couple of lessons and learned how to swim the most basic two strokes; freestyle and breaststroke, I joined a summer team, the Bradley Farm Wave. I was not very

The next part of the training turned out to be the toughest. We were required to dive ten feet to the bottom of the pool and retrieve a ten pound weight. Once the weight was brought to the surface we were supposed to tread water for two minutes while keeping the weight above the water line. This appeared to be simple so I dived in, expecting an easy time. I had no trouble getting the weight to the surface and proceeded to tread water with a feeling of undoubtable success. But once again my anti-floating physical quality began to take effect. At one minute and thirty seconds I began to sink and within the next fifteen seconds my head was submerged and I was fighting for air. The water from the pool began flowing into my mouth with each desperate grasp for air; it felt as if an ocean were draining into my body. I remember hearing from under the water the instructor's muffled voice counting down the last ten seconds of the exercise. When it was all over I slowly made my way back to the pool's edge where I was informed by the two young girls that they had no difficulty

On most days the pool wasn’t extremely busy. Typically, I would only get busy during adult swim's. The kids piled in line waiting with their wet dollars. I usually was the runner, not the cashier. The cashier took the money and sometimes made drinks. The runner would get all the food prepared. I always had to be wearing gloves. Anytime I touched anything but food, I had to get new ones. Usually, I had all the food prepared, but when it gets really busy we runout. Sometimes I would have to heat up the pretzels or hot dogs in the microwave. I hated when that would happen because I would have to run from the staff room back to the concession stand. After an adult swim, I had to fill up a bucket with soapy water and go wash the tables outside. The kids made the worst messes! I found things like dried cheese,