I just saw a brief news story about two New Jersey boys who drowned in farm ponds during the last week. Sad, but not stupid. Adolescent bravado, a sense of daring, and the misplaced certainty that bad things cannot happen to them.
I know, because I was there once.
I was probably 13, wandering nearby farm fields on a cold winter day. Eventually I ended up on the shore of a pond not far from some farm buildings -- this was on land then=owned by a convent who had a small cow herd.
It was a gray weekend day, no one around anywhere, not in obvious sight of anyone. Windy, flakes of snow, good day to be wandering. It had been below freezing for several days, and the pond seemed frozen over. I tested it carefully, one foot at a time, no creaking. I walked onto the ice, just because it was there, because I wanted to. I ventured further, toward the center. I heard a sudden cracking sound, and felt the ice give beneath my feet.
I dropped into icy cold water, holding onto the sides with my arms. I wasn’t especially worried, we’d waded in that pond in the summer and it had been only waist deep at most. I lowered myself down to find bottom, to push push myself upward. But I found no bottom. My boots, filling with icy water, touched nothing. I began, in my adolescent way, to sense that this could be serious.
Still, and fortunately for me, I didn’t panic. I spread my arms on the surface and pushed myself onto the surrounding ice which, for a reason I don’t understand, did not crack under my weight. I crawled out onto the ice, walked to the shoreline, and ran home, about half a mile away, my clothes becoming stiff with ice. I got home, shed my wet clothes, gave some half-true explanation to my mother, and crawled into a hot bath.
While I was in the tub, a man came to the door of the house. He worked at the convent farm, and had seen me fall into the ice, but by the time he got near I was gone. He went from house to house looking for the boy. Two things motivated him. One, he had lost a brother to a pond-drowning, so he was very upset by this, and two, the pond had been dredged and deepened over the summer, so that it was no longer the safe play surface we had presumed it to be.
So, for no better reason than fate I suppose, I sit here typing this story, while two families in New Jersey are mourning the loss of their sons.
Life is like that, and sometimes I forget to feel the gratitude I should feel, for the simple fact of still being alive.
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