LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

         You probably know about the Darwin Awards,   the ones given posthumously every year to people who die doing stupid things. Charles Darwin might say, "It's nature's way of weeding out the dumbest of us".
      I almost got mine long ago but kept it secret. I finally revealed it when I began a new art project with my students. They were asked to write about a memorable event from their past in ten short sentences. Then, they would draw a picture to illustrate it.
    I wrote my story too, about my attempt to built an underwater breathing apparatus. It went like this,

     When I was fourteen I built a diving helmet out of a five-gallon can. I also made a canvas vest loaded with lead to weigh me down. One summer night I tried it out in a motel swimming pool. My family was on a Florida Keys vacation.
      After tying on the weights and helmet I entered the beckoning dark water. It was night. I didn't want anyone around interfering with my experiment.
      Slowly walking towards the deep end I submerged and marveled that -for a while- I could re-breath the air captured inside the helmet.  
    When I was ten-feet under something terrible happened, my invention filled up with water. With so much weight tied to me I could not swim up at all. 
    
    Seeing the pool's ladder nearby I staggered to it, reached the bottom rung, and was able to pull myself up.
    I knew I was lucky to be alive and wondered how my parents would have felt had they found me lifeless in the pool. As I made my way back to our rented cottage I vowed not to tell them -or anyone else-  what had happened.
                              _______

                       _________________ 


              (From the Darwin Award Website)

Honoring Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool--by removing themselves from it in the most spectacular way possible.