The Day I Got Thrown The Chair

JD is a consummate professional. By the time I began training with him he had already trained naval rescue swimmers for over 20 years. His wife is a former coach of the New Zealand Olympic swim team. He had once nearly failed inspection in Hawaii. A young man had succumbed to a shallow water blackout, which is very common during the early phases of hypoxic drills in preparation for free dive training. The revival is usually simple.

On that day, it was not. All attempts to clear an airway for CPR, mouth to mouth, and mouth to nose, had failed. The young man was already dead. JD knew only one more risky, but possibly life saving technique. He lifted the entire dead weight of the young man overhead and threw him down on the deck with all his might, while supporting his head. The force of the impact caused him to immediatley vommit and simultaneously voided all the aspirated water from his lungs. His heart and breathing started. The inspectors checked all the boxes, and it was an immediate pass.

It is an unfortunate reality that most SOF volunteers who give thier lives or become MIA do so in training and not in combat. The volume of training far exceeds actual missions and the advanced skills being rehearsed are always somewhere near that thin blue line between life and death. Nonetheless, this was a world thought I could be a part of and enjoy. Afterall, every day on the farm was life and death, and it was a lonely money-pit with no women. There would be enormous enlistment bonuses available to me in Air Rescue not to mention additional hazard pay for each new certification and rapid advancement in rank and pay grade.

After two years in the pool with JD I was considered overqualified for my chosen MOS. Every day of training ended with 25 meter freestyle sprints in the pool, pulling myself onto the deck, doing 10 push-ups and a shallow angle dive, and repeating this, until my shoulders turned purple from hypoxia. Then, there would be the 25 and 50 meter frog crawls underwater. Training with him would be complete after I had achieved adequate mastery of the most critical life saving techniques: the breast stroke and egg beater kicks.

It was on this day that he gave me the final test which he had failed to mention intentionally. I was instructed to skip warm-downs and instead swim down to the diving area and begin treading water using the egg beater kick I had learned moments before and "smoothing sand" with my arms until he walked over and told me to stop. He walked over and watched and corrected my technique, but never said stop.

He knew from experience that no matter how prepared I considerd myself or how much equipment I had, there would come a time when everthing other than my body would fail and I would be left without conscious thought and be able to rely on only muscle memory and instinct. He knew that, at this time, this skill would make the difference between life and death for myself and others. If I possessed it, I would live and save others. If did not, and I attempted a rescue, I and all the others would drown.

Instead without hesitation or warning, he grabbed the nearest chair and threw it at my head. I caught it, submerged momentarily, and coming up for air, allowed it to sink to the 12' depth. I was still treading. He told me to go back down and get it. I did, and now he told me to keep holding it overhead and treading until he said stop. He never said stop. If I dropped it, I went back down to get it and continued to hold it overhead waiting for the stop that would never come. I don't know how many times I would drop it and retrieve it, or how long I was treading. I couldn't think about time. I couldn't count.

Every time I resurfaced I would be told to hold it higher, tread harder. I thought this would never end. I felt myself losing strength. At times I thought I would finally drown. I couldn't breathe enough air to stop the building burning sensation of lactic acid. My head went under many times. The cramps were hell. I was sure I had "hit the wall" long ago. I knew, if I dropped the chair one more time, my body would no longer be able to surface with or without it.

It was everything I could do to hold it, and I was sinking. It was over once my mouth and nose crossed the thin blue line, and I knew it. I was dead. There was no rescue for the rescuer. I was the last chance of survival for anyone adrift at sea. With the last bit of tenacity I had, I threw the chair at JD and onto the deck. I submerged and kicked myself close enough to grab the edge of the deck and pull myself to safety. I was spent and couldn't even lift my head off the deck. JD was grinning ear to ear and told me I was ready.

I had passed his final test. I had made the choice to save myself first if I couldn't rescue anyone else. He had never told me to do so. He had to be sure that I knew my own limitations, and that when he was no longer there to rescue me, I would not give into the tempation to stop too soon, or keep going to long. I had to know when to tell myself to stop, and when to tell myself to keep going. JD had told me I was ready.

The truth is nothing could prepare me for what was to come, but it taught me that, no matter what, I had to just keep going forward using whatever tools I had available, pace myself, and choose my breaks wisely. I could not be ready for my months spent in lock-down in an over-populated cell block that most seasoned inmates considered worse than any prison, for attempting to kill a domestic terrorist. I could not be ready for my best friend to be diagnosed with terminal lymphoma at 20, or for the chemotherapy to cause her to forget who I was and everything we had ever done together.

I could not be ready for the realization that my parents had the most sensitive part of my body cut off twice as an infant, before I could understand it's function or give my consent, only so that I could match my heartless father and because of Vietnam War stories my fear-mongering grandfather had told my mother. I could not be ready to be disowned by my rascist and homophobic parents for expressing my grief from this and be left by my brother to live alone on 56.1 acres 1.5 miles and 750' above the nearest county maintained road for loving someone they considered to be the enemy only because of where she was born.

I could find the strength to keep my own integrity, and my own head above water through all of this, and I can still. I can just keep swimming until I reach that shore of rescue for myself, in absence of anyone else in my life to save. I can resolve to keep that chair above water for another year. I can find the strength to persevere, regardless of how many times I hit the wall, or how many oppose me. I can resolve to do what I know in my heart is right, even when everyone tells me that I am wrong. I can continue to make the choice to save myself first so that I will live to, someday, have the oppurtunity to rescue another soul lost in the endless sea of being. I can be that rock of rescue standing tall and firm against the waves and tides of time that crash against me.