True Story . . .no, Seriously!!

Digging through some of my old college work, I found this paper that I had to write for my English class in my first semester. Now, I know you're thinking 'Oh great, she wants to share some of her HOMEWORK with us. Bleh'. Well, this paper is about an event that really took place in my life, and I look back on it now laughing to the point of tears. This happened in September of 2006, not long after my friend Andrew and I graduated from high school. Forgive my stupidity, please. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed that time years ago :)


"Don't forget the air pump," I reminded Andrew as I gathered the boxes into my arms. "It would be really hard to blow up these mattresses with our lungs."
"I'm not going to forget, freakin' idiot!" he teased, putting on his notorious Napoleon Dynamite impersonation. "What do you think I am, a retard?"
Two inflatable twin-size air mattresses: $20.00. Air pump: $15.00. Mischieviously floating the canal with a good friend: priceless.
Under a sweltering September sun, the two of us traveled through the hip-high reeds and dust clouds, headed west on the Canal Road toward Willard and Brigham City. I had been on this dirt road many times walking my dog Scout, biking to Willard Bay, or simply seeking refuge from the stress of life in the road's peaceful quietude. Many of my solitary adventures had taken place out of here, but today I had with me an accomplice. We had set aside this special day to satiate our rambunctious thirst for adventure---doing so by conquering the great canal!
For an entire year, we had dreamed of performing the feat, but with obligations of high school life foiling our plans it seemed the adventure would never happen. Now that our three year prison term (ahem, highschool term) had been servedm that adventure was now within reach. I once heard a wise individual say that each of us keeps a bit of "child" with us throughout our lives. To this day I wonder if that disaply of immaturity we pulled back in September was a shameful manifestation of those "childish" traces.
When I saw the grapevines spilling over the chain link fence, I knew we were close. Soon I heard the canal's gushing water, and just around the bend that rushing serpent of murky brown water came into view. My heart fluttered with anticipation at the melody of its churning rapids. Andrew and I stopped alongside the bank. As he unpackaged the first deflated mattress, I grabbed the air pump and eyed it quizically. "Andrew?"
"What?" he answered.
"This is a tire pump, dummy. It's not going to blow up a mattress!"
An awkward silence ensued. I stared at the pump angrily, wishing to melt its plastic body with my seering eyes. "Do you know what this means?" I chortled madly.
Mattress one nearly took my breath away, but not in the sense that I was amazed or smitten by anything; I mean it LITTERALLY stole the oxygen out of me! My face flared a dark red before it was mildly or even VISIBLY inflated. I felt like I was giving mouth to mouth resucitation to a limp, plastic cocoon. With each breath, my vision fizzed darker and I felt closer and closer to the brink of unconsciousness. Andrew wasn't much better off; matter of fact, his knees buckled beneath him before his tenth breath. By the time I had inflated both his mattress and mine, my lungs felt like stretched, shriveled balloons that had been tried to their max. I silently cursed Andrew for wussing out. But my shortness of breath did not stunt my spirits. I think all that light-headedness left me with a strangely euphoric feeling, and I was more gung-ho than ever to embark on what would infamously become known as 'the Great Canal Adventure'.
I placed my inflated mattress atop the water, which rushed along like a green, algae-infested conveyer belt. I sprinted along the bank, following alongside my mattress as the canal water lazily carried it adrift. I leapt from the bank's edge and aimed for the mattress in a less-than-graceful belly flop. "Geronimo!" I bellowed as my body slammed against the plastic. The raft bobbed up and down in the water like a tossed ship. Andrew followed soon after, but with much greater impact to the mattress. Consequently, he had pools of water aboard his 'ship. I could only laugh at him for his clumsiness.
Below the hot sun we floated lazily along the canal, occasionally hitting turbulent rapids and cheering with each precarious collision. We paddled and rowed along. Bikers on the trail passed us by and eyed us curiously; we could only laugh in response to their befuddled expressions. Within me I felt a strange sense of fulfillment as if I had trespassed not only beyind 'private property', but beyond my own personal borders. I felt free of any limits, boundaries, or rules, While floating along that canal, I tasted what must have been 'freedom'. Laying belly down on that air mattress with my arms passing through the cool water, my eyes shut and my skin sizzling pleasantly in the sun---never had I experienced anything more refreshing. I could almost hear Christopher Cross's voice crooning "Sailing" in the back of my mind. I was broken from my peaceful trance when Andrew caught up with me and splashed dirty canal water over me. I playfully retaliated and paddled after him.
We floated for what seemed miles and miles, pas the cow pasture and the peach orchard, the berry bushes and the llama pens. As I reflect on it now, it seems we were drifting for hours. I could have sworn at the time that we were a mile or two within Willard, but that may or may not be an accurate guess. I was still pretty light-headed after the mattress catastrophe, after all.
I was nearly dozed off on my mattress when I suddenly heard Andrew's voice call out. "Look out ahead, Jossi!"
Rarely was Andrew ever serious in anything, but this time his tone of voice sounded very grave and urgent. Sunlight spilled back into my eyes as I reopened them, nearly blinding me; I could scarcely make out the terrifying image of a steep fall of water ahead, spewing through a sort of dam or grate. The roar it made was horrifying. My heart churned to a stop. Andrew agilely jumped off the bouyant surface of his mattress and somehow leapt back onto the bank. I, unfortunately, was not quite as nimble. Petrified, I lay there staring at the waterfall like a deer in headlights.
"Jossi! Look out!" he cried.
It was too late. In what seemd like a nanosecond, I was flipped into the dam. My mattress capsized as I was submerged deep into the murky water. It felt ten times colder when my entire body was engulfed in it. I suddenly realized that the rushing water had thrown my limp body against the grate. My forehead hit one of the steel bars with decent force and my arms got caught between two other bars. The downpour of water had me pressed violently against the grate. Even with my own strength, I couldn't meet the water's great velocity. I was trapped between a rock and a hard place . . .well, more like a grate and a thick, impenetrable wall of water. I gasped silently in my head, yet I held my breath cautiously. I would not be drowned, I promised myself. This couldn't be happening. My strength was vain against the water's force, and in a silent panic I struggled. Restrained beneath the water, I was certain that I would going to die here. This all must have been the result of bad karma; I never should have trespassed beyond private property; I never should have planned out this adventure. Was this really my fate? Was it my destiny to drown in the Pleasant View canal? Would my body rot and decay in this water, leaving me as the notorious Utah girl who sucked in water after illegally floating the canal? Maybe they would build a monument of some kind in my martyrdom, a monument built in my honor at the mouth of the canal road. If I were to really die here, what would happen to my family and friends? Would they miss me? I would never have the chance to go to college or to get married and have children. I guess you say that in those terrifying moments, my life really did flash before my eyes.. Suddenly, my body geared into that "fight or flight" mode that I had read about in my psychology class my senior year of high school. My adrenaline gushed, my muscles tightened, and with all the strength I could muster in that second I lifted myself out of the water and groped for a railroad tie laid over the crate. My shriveled lungs gasped from breath and I savored the feeling of the summer air eveloping me. Air! I was alive! I could see the sun hanging in the sky above me! At the same time the ice-cold rapids tore gruesomely at my arched back.
"Jossi!" Andrew frantically called. He ran across the railroad tie that spanned from bank to bank and reached for my hand. With his help, I was pulled out of the water and on top of the railroad tie. The two inflatable mattresses were nearly torn to shreds as they suffered the wrath of canal rapids and the metal grate combined. It was as if the grate and the rapids made a pact with eachother to incinerate anything crossing their paths. Andrew and I left the ten dollar mattresses to their terrible fates in the dam, a fate I had by some miracle evaded.
I made the mistake of wearing my beloved Chuck Taylor's and my favorite jeans that day at the canal. And even now the both remain soiled with the water's brown detritis. I see it as a souvenir or battle scar of some kind, and no matter how many times they're thrown into the washing machine, the stains have not yet come out---not even to this day. Is the brown essence that poisons the cotten a reminder of my near death in those waters, or a warning never to go back?
The journey back to the car was several miles. The sun was setting in the distance now. With every step I took, my shoes sloshed musically on the dirt trail. I almost would have thought that walking for miles with soggy shoes was miserable, but I relished every minute of it.
"So what do we do next?" I asked Andrew with my hands in pockets.
He shrugged neutrally. "Dunno." he mumbled, exhausted. "We can go spelunking."
My eyebrows furrowed. "Isn't that dangerous, like staying for days in a dark cave with limited rations?"
"Yeah, kind of."
I concentranted on my sopping-wet Converses, mourning over them for only a second. I grinned. "Sounds fun." I beamed. "Let's do it."

The End!

lol man I was so stupid :P