Overboard — the whole story
I was about twelve years old when my grandfather decided I was finally old enough to go fishing by myself in his boat.
To a twelve-year-old boy, that was a pretty big promotion.
It was a very hot day, and at some point I stood up in the boat just to stretch.
And the next thing I knew, I was underwater.
I don’t remember the falling part. I simply remember finding myself submerged—and, more importantly, realizing that I didn’t know which way was up.
That was a strange sensation.
I was alone, underwater, completely disoriented, and for whatever reason, I didn’t panic.
Instead, I remember thinking very clearly:
Just relax. You’ll float to the top.
So that’s what I did.
I stopped trying to figure out which direction I should swim. I relaxed and let the water solve the problem for me.
And sure enough, I floated to the surface.
There was the boat.
I swam over to it, managed to climb back in, and resumed being a twelve-year-old fisherman—although presumably a somewhat wetter and wiser one.
Later my grandfather came to pick me up.
When he learned what had happened, he was not nearly as impressed with my successful application of elementary buoyancy as I was.
He was mad.
And he informed me that this was the last time he was going to let me go fishing alone in his boat.
Looking back, what stays with me isn’t really the fall.
It’s that moment underwater.
I couldn’t tell which way was up, and somehow, at twelve years old, I understood that struggling was the wrong thing to do.
Relax. Float. Then climb back into the boat.
Not a bad lesson, really.
And I’ve had occasion to use variations of it ever since.