Member-only story
I come from the water
I Nearly Drowned In Front of A Crowd
And I wouldn’t trade that day for anything
Being a broke kid in Southern Illinois didn’t involve a lot of lake trips or days at the beach, so I reached 10 years old with no ability to swim. But all you had to do was stay out of the Mississippi River, then buoyancy didn’t come up a lot in the Midwest.
I was broke because my father had thrown me, my sister, and my mother out of our home. This kicked off my parents’ much-needed divorce, and I wouldn’t see much of my father again for years.
Society lovingly called me a “product of a broken home.”
My grandparents took us in while my mother tried to get us back on our feet. They owned a modest house my grandpa helped build in the 1970s. I came to think of their city as my hometown. It was the first place where I made neighborhood friends.
The kids nearby came from traditional households. The boy three houses down had a trampoline and a Super Nintendo. We played Street Fighter II and NBA Jam with the sports-obsessed kid with the bad attitude from across the street. Other children came and went on their bikes.
Eventually I met Dustin from the duplex around the corner and felt like I had something in common with another kid…
