Personal Narrative: St. Lawrence Water

The thing about drowning and not dying is that it makes at least a memorable story. My reason is great for how awful it is. I went under in the St. Lawrence River because I was too stupid to recognize my limits. Like any sane person, I do not wish to be in that position ever again. That mistake will not be made a second time, considering I would be dead. When I was 11, I found out that I had exercise-induced asthma. And since it only happens when I exert myself, some people don't really see it as having asthma. So for six years, I had been deliberately not using my inhaler for certain types of exercise. I thought I could train myself into being tougher because I don’t really have asthma—only sort of. Swimming was one of the activities where I chose not to use my inhaler because I had always been fine before. Thus, as I gazed out on the choppy gray waters from my great-aunt’s trailer home I felt no fear. For six years, I had been forced into swimming lessons, so I was pretty confident in my swimming skills. Even though I had quit before mastering the butterfly stroke, I could still breaststroke decently. When I felt the water, a brief sense …show more content…
After adjusting to the chill temperature of the water, I sat on some rocks and let the waves knock me around. On the other hand, the rest of my family had grown restless, wanting to brave the increasingly high waves. After treading water for a bit, my father decided it would be a great idea to swim to the buoy—really just a piece of wood—that was thirty feet away in the waves. My sister Sarah and I accepted the challenge and we swam out to the flotation device with hardly any difficulty. However, I had swum out using breaststroke and I could already feel my thigh muscles burning. My hair was floating by my face and it was hard to spit it out. So I swam back, feeling satisfied with how much I had accomplished. Then, riding high on the crest of our victory, my family and I decided to swim out one more