My Near-death experience

A few decades ago, when I was in my 20’s, I lived in the southern tip of the country. I had successfully passed my exams (Art & Media Technology) and as a present, to myself, I took up diving. We mostly practised in a public swimming pool. On occasion, however, we practised in the wild in one of the surrounding lakes.

Then one day it happened.

For your one-star licence, the requirement is that you swim underwater blind (with a black piece of plastic in your goggles). We went outside to one of the lakes to make it more realistic. (This exercise is to test how well you do in murky waters.)

The distance wasn’t all that great, but being unable to see and being underwater does something to a person. One starts to imagine all kinds of things. Sharks, Piranhas, THE LOCH NESS MONSTER.

I think that I couldn’t have been in the water for more than 2 minutes when I felt ‘a force’ pulling me back by my right leg. Ever so slightly at first. I thought I was imagining things. But then it happened again, and again. Oh my goodness! SOMETHING CREEPY WAS NIBBLING AT MY LEG!

I swam to the other side of the lake as fast as I could while that ‘thing’ kept on biting at me. It was obviously looking for the right time to bite my leg off. My heart was racing like crazy and I swam like there was no tomorrow.

As I catapulted out of the water like a penguin on Antarctic ice, I quickly pulled off my flipper and goggles to fend off ‘the monster’. And then I saw it.

It was a fish. A small fish that was still attached to a fishing hook and line. The line had caught my flipper. The poor thing was a big as the palm of my hand and probably fighting for its life.

My team looked at me wide-eyed unable to appreciate my near-death experience.

“You okay?” the instructor asked

“su..sure,” I said panting heavily

I passed that exam also, but to this day it is still the scariest 60 seconds of my life.