DEEP WATER By William Douglas     I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, Hi, Skinny!     How'd you like to be ducked?     I laughed and said, 'Well, Mr. Terror, what do you think you can do to me'? It fled and I swam on.     It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima River was... Show more

DEEP WATER By William Douglas    

I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, Hi, Skinny!    
How'd you like to be ducked?    

I laughed and said, 'Well, Mr. Terror, what do you think you can do to me'? It fled and I swam on.    

It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima River was treacherous. Mother continually warned against it and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the Y.M.C.A pool was safe.    

Then I started down a third time. I sucked for air and got water. The yellowish light was going out. Then all effort ceased. I relaxed. Even my legs felt limp; and a blackness swept over my brain.    

The belt went through a pulley that ran on an overhead cable. He held on to the end of the rope, and we went back and forth, across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. On each trip across the pool a bit of the panic seized me. Each time the instructor relaxed his hold on the rope and I went under, some of the old terror returned and my legs froze. It was three months before the tension began to slack    

The experience had a deep meaning for me, as only those who have known stark terror and conquered it can appreciate. In death there is peace.

There is terror only in the fear of death, as Roosevelt knew when he said, 'All we have to fear is fear itself.' Because I had experienced both the sensation of dying and the terror that fear of it can produce, the will to live somehow grew in intensity. At last I felt released — free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside fear.    

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