The Day I Nearly Drowned

I am blessed with the gift of vivid memory recall. I can think of a random event that happened at some point in my life and remember the moment in time with great detail.

This one is brought to you by six-year-old me, about the day I nearly drowned in an irrigation channel thanks to a half-cousin who thought he was being funny.

It was an early fall day, perhaps mid-September. We lived in Arvada, Colorado, in a farmhouse. On this day, my wicked stepfather had taken me and a cousin who was visiting to a neighboring farm owned by someone he knew. My cousin's name was Lynn, and he was twice as old as me. He had a broken collarbone. I was wearing an orange and brown cowboy shirt (the kind with snaps), brown pants, and cowboy boots, and a white cowboy hat that I wore everywhere.

The neighbor's name was Roland. I recall that he owned the farm we were living on and was our landlord. He always wore a tan leather work glove on his right hand with the fingers turned in. He did this because he had lost the four fingers of his hand at the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints in a farm accident. His lack of fingers fascinated me. I don't know why.

We were at Roland's place for a while. Naturally, cousin Lynn and I became restless, so we started wandering Roland's property. For reason unknown, boys always seem to find running water. The faster it's running, the sooner they find it too. It wasn't long before Lynn and I found the large irrigation canal running through Roland's farm. The canal was big with swift-running water. It wasn't a ditch you could jump over -- it was wide and deep.

We walked along the bank, finding one of the canal's waterfalls. It dropped about six or eight feet. It was big compared to a six-year-old boy. We were standing at the top of the waterfall, throwing rocks and sticks into the water, watching them go over the falls. Lynn dared me to get close to the water's edge. I was scared but did anyway. I looked up to him, wanting to impress my older cousin.

For some unknown reason, Lynn thought it would be funny to push me into the water. In an instant, I was going over the falls, feet first on my back. Fortunately, the instinct to take a breath on the way down kicked in. A moment later, I was in the plunge pool, deep under water looking up.

I can remember the darkness of the water and the blue of the sky that made its way down through the roiling current. I remember it being really quiet too. I know I was under water for just a moment, but it seemed like I was down there forever. A second or two later, I surfaced, floating down the canal that was too deep to touch bottom in.

I wasn't a strong swimmer at six, and I was struggling to stay afloat. It was then that Lynn, realizing what he had just done, made the decision to dive in and save me. I can remember seeing him throwing his own cowboy hat down on the bank and diving in after me, broken collarbone and all. He pulled me to the bank and out of the water.

The memory kind of goes blank after that. I don't remember the ride home. I know we got in a lot of trouble for playing around the water. I guarantee the outcome wasn't pleasant for me and Lynn both.

I lost my white cowboy hat that day and never got another one.

That made me really sad.