Malodorous Summer Day Camp and Drowning

  Posted on December 31, 2009


When I was a young child of five my parents enrolled me in a summer day camp called Camp Monchatea. I continued to attend this camp every summer through the age of nine. I have some great memories there of friends, fun in the sun, trampolines, arts and crafts, sports activities, making rice crispy treats, and go-carts (I won the contest for the best driver of which I was extremely proud) and telling/hearing scary stories on the top story of one of the camp shelters on rainy days. I even have the memory of how my camp shelter smelled; I know this sounds weird, and no, it wasn’t a bad smell; just one I can’t describe. But I also have one memory that is the most vivid and the most unbearable. Whenever I think about it my heart rate almost always starts to quicken. It has instilled an anxiety in me and has evoked dreams that were both horrific and fascinatingly outrageous throughout my entire life. That memory was the experience of almost drowning. It was one of two things that happened to me in my childhood that could have killed me (I plan to write about the other in another post). I was 6 or so when this happened. Back then in 1972 there were no strict rules about children and wearing safety floating devices around the pool. I have never written this down before so I will give it a shot and forgive me if it’s sketchy. This is what I remember:

It was a bright sunny hot humid day and time for some ‘campy type’ swimming. Lots of kids laughing and screaming in delight in their brightly colored bathing suits; mine was pink with white trim – people frequently told me it was pretty. Girls in their bathing caps, and me in mine, which had a big pink flower on the side. I was standing there contemplating how I would get in to the pool…should I jump in…should I sit and slide down the side….should I meander over to the steps and ease myself into the cool water hmmmmm? Such difficult decisions. I sure loved to be in the pool but I really didn’t know how to swim very well….I was pretty confident about hanging on to the side in areas that were over my head and having so much fun fun fun….and……woaaaa something wacked me in the back knocked the air right out of me and I was abruptly and violently knocked into the deep end of the pool from behind! I was suddenly under water kicking my little feet. I looked up with wide panicked eyes burning from the chlorine and can see kids all around me freakishly distorted by the rippling water…I could still hear the laughing and screaming kids but it was muffled…I stretched my arms out and reached for the kids reached as far as I could and kicked but did not seem to move towards them at the top of the water! The pain in my lungs was agonizing! I needed to breath! Reaching with my arms towards the people all the little people at the top of the water…desperately needing their help!!! Why won’t they see me and help me???!!! Suddenly something pulled and jerked me up so fast…I was weak…my limbs felt like heavy anchors…I couldn’t move them…I was limp….skin scraped onto rough pool decking…bathing cap ripped off…someone’s hand on my forehead…what happened…my head is throbbing I am coughing up fluid…someone hit me in the back…I coughed some more….my eyes are closed…I can’t open them even though I am trying to open them…it is dark I want to see BUT can’t open my eyes….I hear nothing it is dead quiet but I hear my heart beating hard…that’s where my memory of the incident stops. And obviously I am still here so I eventually opened my eyes!

I ironically grew up and became a very good swimmer and love swimming even to this day. However, I have had lucid dreams about being underwater and breathing the water into my lungs and exploring the sea; dreams about being held underwater until my lungs burst and I died. I have had so many dreams of the water like nature that it has almost become a fundamental occurrence of my dreams. Some are good and some are bad…very bad. I am just glad to be alive because I could have died at the age of six.

And now my heart is racing after writing this….

After this occurrence my mom still required me to go to this camp every day even though I was terrified...and if you read my earlier blog titled Willy, Midgets and Mom, you’ll know that my mom would drag me kicking and screaming to that bus that provided door-to-door transportation, every day…UNTIL the birth of the Oompa Loompa’s! My mom was a true gem!