[Subtitle: "How My One Brush With Drowning Has Become a Riotously Funny Story"]

I mentioned this story in another entry, and it makes sense to tell the story so that there’s something funny posted here.

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The story begins somewhere very early in my senior year at MSMS. I’d gotten to know this guy named Rick. He lived in the room I’d lived in the year before; when I had moved into Peyton Hall again, I sought out my old room to see who lived there now.

I’d heard stories—mostly bad—about Rick’s older brother, Chris. Anyhow, I gave Rick a shot, and he turned out okay.

One of us—probably me, but I forget who—saw that the school had set up a trip to canoe down the Okatoma in southern Mississippi. I think the Okatoma is classified as a creek; calling it a river would be laughable. In any event, we decided that we’d give it a whirl.

Ten or so of us went on this trip, but Rick was really the only person I knew or cared to know on that trip. I don’t remember a damn thing that we talked about, but I do remember the story that I’m going to tell you now that I’ve finished pre-ambling.

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Rick is a tall man–say 6′4″ or so. He’s heavier now than he was then, as am I. In any event, we both had a high center of gravity. Putting us in the same canoe—Rick in front, myself in back—was probably the dumbest thing that either of us did that month. Suffice it to say that our canoe would tip over easily.

Oh, hell … we could put the thing over in calm, placid water. In fact, we did just that at one point when we were both tired and happened to shift our weight near-simultaneously.

At some point, we’d gotten pretty good at the retrieve-the-stuff-in-the-canoe dance. [That was probably at tip-over #10 or so. We lost count somewhere in the high teens; I would bet that we dumped it at least 20 times in about six hours of canoeing.] We laughed easily about it, and we saw tipping over as No Big Problem™.

That was a mistake.

If you’ve ever paddled the Okatoma, you know that there’s one teeny “rapid”. If you classified it, it might be a Class 2 … after a good month of daily, heavy rains. The rapid is a small chicane: one progresses through it by yawing the canoe to two o’clock and back to noon. As you pass through the rapid, you drop around two feet. The rapid is produced by a rock formation that has seen many a canoe cut through it. The passage is no more than three or four feet wide and is flanked by sandbars, so if you plan on actually paddling through it, you get to take it.

“This could be fun,” I remember saying. “If one of the gunwales gets close to the water, just dump it.”

“Okay,” Rick replied.

We actually got through most of the rapid okay. As the back of the canoe bottomed out, we hit trouble. We rocked right and then left. I think I shouted, “DUMP IT!” I took a deep breath and, with paddle in hand, went over the side.

Now, being in the back of the canoe, I knew that I’d probably get sucked into the rapid. I did. As I took that deep breath, I decided that I’d rebound off the bottom of the creek and rocket back to the surface. Fighting it seemed silly.

That was a brilliant plan.

Well, not really.

I kept going down. Down.

Down some more.

“Hey, I’m not hitting bottom,” I remember thinking.

“This isn’t very cool. What do I do now?”

At that moment, I heard a voice in my head say, “Put out your paddle.” Call it Providence, call it the Holy Spirit, call it the cheeseburger that I’d had in the cafeteria earlier that week–I decided that it couldn’t be a bad idea.

I hit rock. Sweet, blessed rock. I pushed up.

I could feel the pressure on my chest lessening a bit. I knife-edge the paddle, bringing it to what seemed even with my head. [My eyes were closed the entire time.] I flattened the blade—difficult in the rapid—and then pulled up. Lather, rinse, repeat, and however many strokes later, I was at the surface.

Right in front of another canoe.

I ducked back under water, beginning to panic. “HEY! I just got a good breath of air, and now I’m going to get killed by the next idiot that comes through when I surface.” Panicking is never good in water, no matter how good of a swimmer you are. I fought the panic back, surfaced again, saw Rick, and started to swim downstream, out of the rapid. I can’t remember whether or not I grabbed onto the next passing canoe or not.

Meanwhile, Rick was downstream, wondering where I was. I always imagined him muttering, “Okay, where is that slacker senior? Come on … I don’t want to gather all this crap myself.” The only thing I remember after that is getting all the stuff back in the canoe and moving to the nearest sandbar on the right side of the creek so that we could both lay on the sand and rest without the canoe floating away.

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There’s a hilarious postscript to this story. Five or so years later, Rick was co-oping here in Huntsville and was attending my church. Our pastor asked one morning in worship if any of us had ever had a near-death experience of any sort, specifically anything to do with drowning. At that point, we both started giggling uncontrollably. I then got to re-tell this story to our entire congregation.

As I did so, I was reminded of something a pastor friend of mine had once said in a similar situation: “If you can begin to desire Christ as a drowning man desires air, you’re on the road to God.” I can certainly relate.

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Rick, if you have anything to add, I suggest that you use it as content on your own site.