Wisdom holds that you need to be careful holding your breath when skin diving. Adventure holds that you use the tricks that let you hold your breath a long time. The main trick is hyperventilating until your faces gets tingly before going down. As I understand it, in non-diving mammals, the breathing reflex is triggered by the buildup of CO2 while in diving mammals their brain monitors O2. The advantage of the latter strategy is that the animal does not pass out while underwater; the disadvantage of the other approach is thus manifest for a “non-diving mammal” that dives anyway. The second trick is to go ahead and let your diaphragm do breathing-like movements; just keep your mouth closed. You can live through using both of these tricks while sitting in bed because if you pass out you wake up and record the last number you remember seeing on the stop watch (4 min, 30sec, Tallahassee, 430 Walker Street, about 1970).Doing this underwater has more problematic possibilities.
As I recall the situation, it was summer after our first year in college. Dave and I were doing some sort of work on a private swimming pool and decided to have a contest to see who could swim the farthest underwater. As noted before, one of my famous powers in high school was breath holding. I went first and planned on leaving him with no possibility of matching my submerged lap swimming – this competition being after a big lunch of tuna fish sandwiches which probably contributed to what happened next. I’m not sure if the wet suit bottom I was wearing had any effect.
So off I went. I remember 3.5 laps in the pool. Dave’s side of the story, being conscious longer than I, was more detailed. He said I touched the pool side on lap 4 and then just stayed down. His first thought was that I was trying to be funny so he waited a while before going down to see what I was doing. What I was doing was breathing water in and out of my mouth. He tried to get me out at the near deep end but couldn’t, so he pulled me down to the shallow end and out of the water whence he a) began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, b) got only gurgling sounds, c) flipped me over and lifted me in the middle, d) out poured a lot of water, e) then back to mouth to mouth. [In truth he owed me one life saving as in the past he had stuck a dart in my back, almost blinded me with a microscope light and pushed me off a cliff at Watts Bar Lake…but I digress.]
My “side” (aka almost the “other side”) of events was different. I experienced and remember clearly, as if being trapped in a dream, that I knew I was trapped but couldn’t get out …. and it was not pleasant. I also remember seeing a large distant light centered in what was passing at the time (along with me) for the center of my visual field.
My first this-worldly recollection was not being able to see but being able carry on a conversation with Dave. I said, reasonably enough, “what happened”. He said “you drowned”. Now this response came as big a surprise as if I walked up to you, tapped you on the shoulder, and said “you drowned”. In favor of his case, however, was the last thing I remembered outside the ‘dream’ was 3.5 laps underwater in the pool.
As I began to be able to see, I noted I was wearing the bottom half of my wet suit, and as the emergency people were on their way, my number one priority was to get the wet suit off so as not to have to deal with questions about why I was wearing half a wet suit (still a good question).
Official help showed up, gave me a few whiffs off the oxygen tank, and departed.
My mother’s response to the tale was to take me to the doctor the next day but there seemed to be no lasting problems (I heard that!). She remained nonplussed as to our parting exchange. I said “thanks”. Bailey said something along the lines of “no problem”. Although, that being the day of Yancy Derringer, it remained a standing joke that Dave, having saved my life, now had to follow me around with a shotgun as Pahoo did for Yancy (this traditional Pawnee obligation – forever guarding someone whose life you saved – always seemed the reverse of the debt). In truth, Dave got the worst end of the deal; despite his heroics getting into the newspaper he had bad dreams for some time thereafter……I just had the memory of “the light”.
ML
12/16/2010
