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June 8, 1984 - A Fresh Start | |
Timestamp: Friday March 6, 2026 - 21:57
June 8, 1984
I’m at the bottom. I’m looking up and around… I can see the sky above the water… There’s a trickle of blood that gushes up from my mouth and it goes past my eyes. I have no idea what’s going on although it feels like someone smashed me upside my head with a baseball bat.
So, I don’t know what happened, but if I can get to the surface, I’ll figure it out there. Uhhhh… legs… arms..helloooo - let’s get to the top. Nothing. I’m still at the bottom. I haven’t moved. What the hell is going on? I start looking around and all I can see is my brain telling my arms to move and nothing happens. Just my shoulders moved. That’s it. My arms just stayed and floated - not moving at all.
I don’t know how long I was down at this point, but I could feel I was quickly running out of air. When I dove into the water, I usually breathed out my nose to keep water from sneaking in… well, now my lungs were completely empty because I was expecting to be on the surface by now. Now I’m in a panic because I’m at the bottom of a pool with no way to surface.
As I kept looking around - my vision was quickly closing in. Everything was about to go black. I was about to die. I had lived near water all my life - the Great South Bay on Long Island was my backyard growing up. I had been in backyard pools as much too. It was a way of life. Boats, the bay, pools… I lived in a water town. Now I’m going to drown in a friends pool and watch as it happens.
I didn’t have one of those “life flashing before my eyes” moments, however just before everything went all black, I remember very clearly praying… God - I don’t want to die - please help me! I’ll talk more about this part later.
As soon as I said those word… right then, I was at the surface. I took a huge deep breath and told my friend John who had pulled me up… “Something is really wrong, you guys need to get me out, right away”… and that’s what they did. They dragged me to the pool edge and hoisted me onto the attached deck. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I still don’t know why. It was literally my last day of High School. I had so many plans. Most likely joining the US Air Force like my Dad and Uncles or the Navy. Right then, all that went out the window.
I was on a totally new path - I had no idea what my future was, but I was about to find out.
I’m not usually one to like any spotlight. I like my privacy and I typically just to do my thing and like to be left alone. I’ve lived that way for a long time. It’s time to come out from the shadows. Now that I’m retired after 36+ years of working for the Uncle, I’m catching up on things I meant to do, but pushed aside because of “being busy”.
It was June 8, 1984 - that’s 41 years, 8 months, 3 weeks and 5 days at the time I write this. I have been writing this in my head for years. It’s finally time to do something and put pen to paper… or keyboard to computer as it were. ;-)
