Answer:
This happened when I was a kid. I lived on a naval base, and the pool there was basically occupied by kids during the long, hot summer, with the adults hanging around at the pool’s edge. I was nuts about going underwater, so used to swim down at the bottom – something most people never did.
Anyway, I was swimming along the bottom when suddenly my heart stopped. I had come across the prone body of this kid called Gareth. I knew his brother, and, thinking he was doing some early 90s version of planking, sunk down and lay next to him on the pool floor. I totally expected him to hit me – but he didn’t. He just lay there. So I poked him. Still lay there. Shook him. Still lay there.
At this point I realized what was going on, and grabbed him and hauled him out of the water, yelling for help. The pool was full of people, but for some reason most of them hadn’t seen the kid. The lifeguard on duty had dived in, and grabbed him from me as I hauled him out.
So there I am, a 10-year-old, watching as a lifeguard takes this kid and puts him on the side of the pool, giving him full CPR. The kid splutters to life, off he goes to the hospital, and the whole pool is shocked.
So we’re all sitting there, and I’m sat next to this kid called Aaron. And I start telling him what happened, and he insists no, he was the one who got help. He saw the kid, got the lifeguard. And I’m thinking ‘this is c/rap’. Then the adults start lecturing us on how Aaron had been so brave and heroic.
What had happened, of course, is that we’d both acted. But Aaron got a bike as a reward and grateful thanks from parents. I got called a liar at school. It’s one of those weird memories where everything about it is miserable, but I’m still glad I did it.
Explanation:
