Drowning is a Quiet Affair.

People think that when someone is drowning there is a lot of splashing and screaming. This is not usually the case. I've been present when a couple of lives were saved and each time there was very little if any noise or action of note.

Once I was laying in the sun when I lived in Florida. We lived at one of those apt. complexes with a pool and people were always sending their kids down to swim unsupervised. There was a little girl playing alone and one other lady lying in the sun as well. I was half asleep when I heard a noise.

I was drowsing back off when I heard a distinct "gurgle" again. Since I was half asleep I just wondered to myself what that sound could be. Then I heard the "gurgle" again. I realized that it was the little girl and I jumped up. I guess the other woman realized what was happening at the same time I did because she was already diving in the water as I stood up. She had to go down to the bottom of the pool to get the little girl. It was a good thing we were there. The girl would have been dead otherwise.

Another time my husband and I were swimming in the same pool. It was very crowded that day. We decided to leave. As I started to climb the stairs out of the pool I looked down to see a toddler laying face up about 2 inches under the surface of the water. She wasn't struggling. She was just laying quietly.

I grabbed her and stood her by the pool and she started to cough and sputter. She was gasping for air and her stupid mother just stood there screaming for her daughter to get back over here instead of trying to find out why my husband and I were trying to help her breathe. She had no idea that her child was close to drowning and even when we told her how we found her baby all she said was that she had just seen her playing on the steps only seconds before that.

In neither case did the child splash and scream or any of the other stuff you would think people do when they are drowning.

Last year I was at the pool and a little girl jumped in the deep end and it was obvious she had no business being there as she struggled to get back to the edge of the pool. I watched her like a hawk but I didn't assist her because she needed to realize the position she put herself in. The lifeguard came over and watched her as well but he let her struggle to the side too. Once she made it he asked me what I thought.

I told him to make her go back to the kiddie side of the pool. I had no interest in diving to the bottom and pulling her out. He told her to to to the the other side and she argued with him for at least 10 minutes. I was wondering where her parents were the whole time. They were there. They were at the kiddie end of the pool. They watched their daughter argue with the lifeguard the whole time. They did NOTHING.

That child was an accident waiting to happen and her parents had no interest in teaching her water safety or to respect the lifeguard. Hopefully that was their only trip to the pool last year.