Don't know what happened, but I was telling about the big infected heel when I lost the end of my story. I was actually taken to a doctor for the second time in my life. Without any anesthetic he cut all the thick skin off my heel, and I didn't even feel it. I was tough!! Antibiotics had not been invented, or at least they were not available to us, but I got bandaged up and was fine in a few days.

My three drownings were interesting, only two near drownings, actually, but three good opportunities. I still don't know how to swim, but I was never afraid of water. My favorite thing was body surfing, although we didn't know we were surfing, nor that it was dangerous. We just called it jumping waves. When we saw a big wave coming, we waited until it was almost on us and jumped up to ride it in, instead of letting it cover us. I had never heard of undertow, nor that anyone had ever drowned there. The ocean is not a good place to learn to swim. The mill pond was unsafe, but the boys always learned there. Once, I decided to go into the shallow part and see if I could float. With my face under water I felt my body levitate. It felt wonderful, but when I had to raise my head to breathe, my feet went down and I could not touch bottom. I screamed and went under. A girl I didn't know jumped in and saved my life.

At the beach the next summer I was with a bunch of teenagers and fishing boats on a beach party. None of them were noticing that one of the boys was chasing me with the intent of getting my hair wet. The water was very shallow, maybe less than two feet, when suddenly I stepped into a crater, went down very low and came up just long enough to tell him as loud as I could that could not touch bottom. A man on one of the boats swam over and pulled me out. Paul grabbed my hand to pull me out, but I pulled him in. He didn't come back up. I told the man what had happened, so he went back down and pulled him out. It took quite a while to resuscitate him. Nearly ruined our party!! Neither of us could swim, but none of the others knew. Had they known, they would have told us of the danger. During WWll the military base near there had used the strip for bombing practice, and there were craters all over.

Paul and I had both just graduated from high school, but were headed to different colleges. We wrote for a year and the next summer planned on dating. My family had moved down near the beach while I was away at college. My very, very brief "romance" is an interesting story which I will detail a bit later.

I escaped one more tragedy at summer 4H camp in what Hyacinth Bucket would call a "riparian"
incident. I was in my swim suit and white rubber cap (I hated getting my hair wet) standing on the pier at White Lake watching kids , dive off the end. I knew it was too deep for me, but I wanted to try it, so I chose a spot along the side and went in head first, not realizing it was too shallow. I could feel my head crunching as it dug a hole in the bottom and filled my cap with sand. I was too embarassed to tell anyone what I did; I don't think anyone saw. My head was spinning for a while.

Daddy was not a hunter, so we never had firearms around, but my uncle came by with a rifle, which he left loaded on our porch while he went in the house. I was raking leaves from under the porch. Bill picked up the rifle, got me in its sights and pulled the trigger. I heard the bullet whiz by my head and land in the post right by my head. What an opportunity to pull a joke on him! I collapsed on the ground and nearly scared everybody to death. It didn't seem very funny to anyone but me.

That about covers my growing up years. On my honeymoon in Yellowstone Park I could have been eaten by a bear. We stopped on the highway for me to take a picture of two adorable cubs, but I didn't see the mother until she charged me. Just before reaching the car I fell sprawling on the highway, skinning the palms of both hands on the pavement, losing the camera and my dignity, but closing the door in the bear's face!

Did I manage to go to college four years, learn to drive a car and teach school forty one years without a single disaster? Well, not quite. I managed to total two cars without anyone in either car being hurt. Upon retiring I guess I became more daring than ever. I have three stories of real disasters which I will relate in the next blog, and then you can see how many lives I actually have had.