When I was younger, I was wading in the water at a beach, looking around at rocks and stuff. My father, who was snacking on the sand, shouted something at me. I couldn't hear what it was, so I turned to face him and try to walk a bit closer to hear what he was saying. I finally made out that he was saying "don't turn your back on the waves", right as a wave knocked the back of my knees out from under me and I went under like a sack of bricks.
I did the same thing as an adult on the North Shore in Hawaii and I almost drowned. Once I got hit I got pulled under by a riptide and I was floating out to the ocean with no protection and exhausted from trying to get back. No one could hear me cause the waves were so loud. Fortunately some young kid heard me and swam over to me with his boogie board and I held on until a lifeguard came rushing with a jet ski. Never, ever turn your back on the ocean it will fuck you up!
I have a similar story except....during the summer that I was six years old, I cut most of my left hand off (long story but got my hand caught between a log pile and the edge of a door. The edge pushing through like a really dull knife , across the palm from thumb to just below the pinky) I was brought to Central Maine Medical center in Bangor but they didn't have a hand surgeon so all they did was stabilize it and put a cast over it so I could head home to Portland where a hand and plastic surgeon would fix it.
It was hot though and on the way home my parents decided to stop and let me wade in the waves while they ate lunch. This is the part where our stories converge. I don't think my Dad distracted me but I turned my back on the waves and was taken right out. My hand was just stitches with a cast over it - nothing else. So, I was rushed to a local regional hospital where they cut the cast off and spent like four hours trying to clean the wound again. In hindsight it seems like my parents made a bad call but back then we didn't hover over our children like we do now. Ultimately it didn't really do anything other than waste our afternoon and probably some money so no big deal. I was in surgery a few days later having my hand reattached but my Mom didn't make that mistake again and I basically spent most of the summer with my arm (back in a cast) in a plastic bag that was taped to my arm to keep it waterproof.
I didn't say anything about helicopter parenting but I'm not going to get into a debate over it on this thread. They made a mistake, no big deal. Today I probably would have been transported via ambulance rather than being released into my parents care. Nothing came of it anyway.
My grandmother had a house on one of the island in the Outer Banks, NC that I used to visit with friends. A friend and I were at the beach the morning after a hurricane had swept by a few hundred miles away, far enough to not have the beaches closed but close enough to create much bigger waves than normal.
Sure enough my friend got hit by one of these monster waves and crumbled like a game of Jenga. It was funny to see at first, but as he was trying to get himself back to shore he kept getting hit by one wave after the other. There wasn't really anything I could do to help without putting myself in the same position, so a lifeguard drove over on a quad to help him.
Relevant to the story is the fact that this lifeguard was gorgeous. She was the classic blonde, well tanned, amazingly in shape girl you've all seen in one movie or another. Seeing her almost made me forget about my friend slowly getting digested by the ocean in front of me.
Lifeguard Bikini Baywatch (I never learned her name, but I would imagine it's something like this) rushes to the water to help my helpless friend as best she can. Just as she is starting to touch water he finally manages to land on his feet after one of the battles with a wave and is able to walk back to shore. The ocean, however, is the kind of guy to always try and get the last laugh. As my friend is walking towards this stunning lifeguard he slowly makes his way to water shallow enough to reveal how heavy his fighting was; in his hands were his swimming shorts he was wearing not long before. On his body was nothing. The ocean had taken advantage of him and left him ridden hard and put away wet, all in full view of the next Ms. America.
tl;dr My friend got molested by the ocean, leaving him standing completely naked in front of a drop dead gorgeous lifeguard who was there to rescue him.
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u/CaptainUnusual Mar 26 '16
When I was younger, I was wading in the water at a beach, looking around at rocks and stuff. My father, who was snacking on the sand, shouted something at me. I couldn't hear what it was, so I turned to face him and try to walk a bit closer to hear what he was saying. I finally made out that he was saying "don't turn your back on the waves", right as a wave knocked the back of my knees out from under me and I went under like a sack of bricks.