When I was eleven, my mom and I went to the beach near us. I’ve always been a little afraid of the ocean, and the waves were really rough, so I didn’t want to go in. My mom convinced me to go out past where the waves break so that we could swim easily, with our boogie boards, and we did. We started out being about 40 feet from shore, laughing and swimming, until after about 10 minutes I looked out and saw that we were much, much farther from shore. I could barely see anybody on the beach, with my 20/20 vision. My mom panicked and we tried to swim back to shore, though it was somehow very difficult. My mom made it to shore but I was still there, trying to swim. Every time I’d make it a few feet, I’d just get sucked back in immediately, further and further until I couldn’t even hear my mom screaming from shore anymore. However, nobody seemed to be doing anything on the beach. I swam until I could see my mom start to come out and I got so tired I just… sank, and I probably sunk for about 5 seconds until I could feel someone pull me up by my bathing suit and a man I had seen earlier on the beach with his kids slung me on his back and started swimming to shore.
Only problem was that he was getting sucked back out by the rip tide, too, until we eventually drifted out even further. Its all kind of fuzzy from there on, but the next thing I remembered was being put on someones surf board and floating back to shore, where I hugged my sobbing mother for about 5 minutes while everyone clapped for the people who saved my life.