Water’s joy also brings danger of drowning

While a premature passing is by no means the only way a life can go amiss, drowning seems a particularly preventable end to promise.

It is mostly a delight to be around water when the weather is hot or the fish are biting. It is foolhardy and occasionally tragic, however, to do so without sufficient attention to the risks. Because neither children nor inebriates fully recognize danger, they require special watching.

At the least, anyone who spends time around water should know how to swim. Not that the ability to swim guarantees survival. Occasionally, skill provokes misplaced reliance on one’s ability that factors for neither deficient stamina nor unwarranted bravado nor impaired judgment.

An orange sun already was drooping toward the horizon when Sugar Bear, a strong and fearless swimmer, A pair of bull moose face off over rights to a patch of mud where they were feeding at the Umbagog Wildlife Refuge in Wentworth’s Location, N.H. The larger bull at left eventually relented to find his own mud. announced to shorehugging companions he was going to paddle the inner tube on which he was floating to Canada. Off Bear went, he and his tube soon shrinking toward becoming a dark spot in the evening vastness of a placid Lake Erie.

A distant boat crept toward Sugar Bear, stopped and after a while began motoring toward shore where a few

teen-aged boys staring north noted the dark spot was missing. After some minutes travel time, the boat deposited Bear and tube not far from where he’d departed.

He paddled to the Ohio shore, some 50 miles distant from his stated destination.

“Man, those guys were mad,” Sugar Bear said.

“What did you say to them?” someone asked.

“I said I was going to Canada,” he said.

To live is to witness, to witness is to wonder about the scheme to any of it. About who gets saved and who doesn’t and why. Is there an answer to why?

Lee, an athletic age 14 or so not only liked by most but admired by many, was swimming less than 50 yards offshore with a buddy when he went under. It was a Sunday in early June and school was just out for the summer and a lifetime lay ahead. Those friends who soon after peered at the fatal but familiar shimmering water from the church parking lot pondered how this could be.

Also not saved was the little boy fished out of a guarded public beach in broad daylight. And Rant, a teen well-known around parts of town. And Tim, the 13-yearold suitor of a sweet neighbor girl. And Alice, a friend’s young sister aboard an anchored craft smashed by a drunken speedboater one warm night near Cedar Point.

Saved was Slinky, a mean-spirited but in some ways sheltered kid who had not learned to swim at age 14 or so. Along with two boys of similar years, he was aboard a dinghy being rowed 100 yards or more offshore on cool Lake Erie in mid-May. Buzzy swam out to join the three boys in the overloaded tub and promptly filled it with water while trying to climb aboard.

Slinky shrieked and jumped onto the back of a plunging boat mate, wrapping limbs and legs around his buddy’s arms and shoulders like a tangled backpack filled with stones. Unable to get free from Slinky’s desperate grasp, for a moment or two the boy wondered whether he might drown as he sank farther from the receding surface.

The depth of the water saved him. Once Slinky felt himself going under he loosened his headlock and began thrashing toward the surface to keep his own head above water. Buzzy submerged to hold Slinky upright, while the freed boy surfaced and took a deep breath before fetching the overturned boat for shaking Slinky to ride while he was pushed to shore.

On the walk home, Slinky acknowledged, which was unusual for him, that he’d been scared he was a goner out there, scared enough to change the direction of his budding life.

“I’m never going to do another bad thing,” he vowed earnestly as if a priest were present to grant absolution.

What’s not easy to forget probably shouldn’t be forgotten, although time has its way with even harrowing memories.

Slinky grew into an uninhibited user of recreational drugs, moved to landlocked Las Vegas, where he drove a truck, cut off ties with his siblings and a few years ago refused to come home for his mother’s funeral.

Be watchful out there.