Broadcast 106.3fm: Story Excerpt 1
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
one summer, when my brother was about 12 and I was eight, we went out to a pond in Indiana. It was a place we went to with a bunch of people from our church, so several 100 people and was owned by a man who gave us ultimately private summer access. There was a long, grass covered road where a car would bounce and bump and move sideways and you feel like you're falling out into the swamp. But ultimately we would eventually get out from the long drive to the pond. And there were two different days that I remember the pond. The first day with the 300 people. There was a day where he had bought hundreds of watermelons in a truck and they unloaded the watermelons and they threw them into the pond and they floated in the pond and we were all in our swimsuits and we ran out. We spun the watermelons around and threw him in the air. Let him smash on the ground like depth charges on a aircraft carrier to destroy a submarine. At the time, I didn't have a fear of water. It was not a thing for me fear of water. And I remember that day being one of the great days where everyone was just laughing and having such a good time with watermelon and heat and sand and bugs and green and brown Blackwater. And there is just a fantastic electric life it was feeling for and eating watermelon until we really were so full. We wanted to throw up peeing every six minutes, peeing in the pond, that kind of thing. It was great. But later that summer, I went out with my brother to the pond. The cat tails were high, and I noticed as we were moving toward the shore, there was an ugly mess of seaweed that had congregated onto the small beach. I didn't think much of it just kicked it with my toe. My brother picked it up and threw it at me, and I remember feeling like I was covered in slime, and so I ran right for the pond to wash it off. He ran into I could swim pretty good. Not great, but pretty good enough to get by. I could do more than doggy paddle, but at that age I was kind of between, but it was that day where I got my fear of water on the way it came about was subtle and terrifying. Okay, he and I swam out and I could feel the water temperature change from the warm at the shoreline. Too cold. Peter was taller and faster and could swim really well. And where he was, there was a giant line of seaweed on the surface of the water. And he grabbed it and he put it over his face in his head and swam over to me and pretended like he was a seaweed monster. It just so happened that there was so much seaweed that you could kind of stand on it. You still have to swim. But you could put some of your weight on the big mess of seaweed under the water Peter could stand. He had found some kind of jutting out rock in the pond, found a way to stand, and he was still goofing and making strange monster noises with his seaweed Oliver's head Pretty much going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, remember feeling of fish go by my foot and I always loved that feeling because I knew in my mind that the pond was safe. Certainly, Jaws was not inside it. I didn't have that irrational fear. But then I remember standing on the seaweed and I got too confident, and I started to sink a little bit. Tonight turned my leg wrong, and my leg got caught up in a messy seaweed. And then, as I kicked it started to wrap around my leg more somehow, in my kid, logic remembered 20,000 leagues under the sea and the octopus stay clear of the tentacles. They'll seize anything within reach and hang on to the death. And something in my mind said, There's something there. Of course, it's just seaweed. But it was rapping in my leg, and the more kicked them. What was wrapping around I like, And then it was wrapping around the other way. And then I was under, and then I was inside the seaweed and then e couldn't get out. And then I was drowning. I could see the surface of the water and the sunlight, and I could see all of the seaweed around me in the dark water, and I was going to die. It's felt very clear, but it just so happened that my brother, I was wondering where I'd gone. I could tell because he was swimming over the top of me above. I could see his legs and the son, he was looking for me. He knew I was under on. Then all I could do is grab his ankle. E grabbed his ankle and pulled myself up enough as he kicked. Then he came down and he grabbed me and pulled me up. We went to the shoreline, and I never said a word to anybody now half full. It's not the same as half empty. It's not the same as empty and you're not dead. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself I'm not empty. I'm alive and I get to be alive. And if that isn't worthy of picking the attitude of half full, that you get toe live and it's your chance to live and that there's more. There's a story. There's something more for you. Then forget about your moment when you were a kid and something like that happened to you and that reality that you got to live. I've got several stories like that secret things that happened to me like that that are terrifying, and that is how I got my fear of water. I still have that fear of water. It's the last fear I have. Something happens to me on water. No trouble on a boat Grew up in Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes used to drive my grandpa speedboat. No problem. Cakewalk. Lots of fishing. Love water. That's the irony. I love water. I'm just terrified of being in it. It's just a thing. And it was only this year that I realized it was from that incident out of the pond. I love water and I'm terrified, not afraid of fire. I'd run into a burning building in a second. No trouble. Why I would do that. I e mean, what would be happening? I can't tell you what. Certainly that's not my fear. But what I know about being half full is that when I go back and whenever empty day I have are a day where I feel half empty. I can go back to say that pond and imagine my brother alive. Imagine us playing even as dark and as difficult as that Waas. I was rescued that day, searching back into childhood that makes me realize that my life is not half empty at all. It's totally full