[muraiki]

I've seen articles like this before, and whenever I read them I think about a time on vacation when I could quite possibly have drowned. I had traveled abroad with some friends and went into relatively shallow water. However, I hadn't swam at all in many years, and I was also out of shape.

We decided to have a swimming race. About halfway through I was completely exhausted, both from being out of shape and not being a very good swimmer in the first place. At that point I stopped to rest and realized that my feet couldn't hit the bottom. I recall my mouth being above and then below water, along with panic. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I got the idea to try and backfloat, which I was able to do. After resting a bit I was able to direct myself to shallow water again.

At the time I didn't think too much of it, but when I reflect upon it I think that I was drowning. My friends were indeed not far away, and I couldn't yell or thrash my hands around. It's scary to consider that I could have died while so close to them!