Posted on 05/29/2021 2:07:13 AM PDT by RandFan
One night when he was 18, Steven Webb dived into an open air swimming pool and his life changed forever. He hit his head on the bottom of the pool and was paralysed from the neck down. Now aged 48, he has been elected mayor of his home city. This is his journey from rock bottom to a place where he hopes to help others, as told to Miles Davis.
It was a Sunday night, 1 September 1991. I know it was 10:31 because I looked at my watch just before I dived into the pool.
It was an open air pool at Truro School. We were trespassing but we'd done it lots of times before.
I dived in off the top of the wall at the deep end like I had done many times. This time I hit the bottom with my head and a massive shock went through my body.
I tried to swim to the surface but I couldn't move my arms. I couldn't swim anywhere. I started to run out of breath and panicked then my friends swam down and pulled me to the surface.
'I'll never walk again'
I had broken my fifth cervical bone and it went right through my spinal cord. I spent 12 months in hospital.
I had to have a tube in my throat but it went badly and meant I couldn't speak for several months.
I could only communicate through tapping - once for yes, twice for no.
I knew I was paralysed but still thought I would walk out of there.
Then the doctors came and said I would probably never walk again. They were telling me how complicated my life was going to become.
I came home to a different life. It ages you, I suppose, spiritually.............
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
My best friend all the primary school, went off to college and did this exact thing - dove into a shallow pool, broke his neck and now, 40+ years later is still confined to a wheelchair - paralyzed from the waist down.
Your entire life can change in a second, and unfortunately young people sometimes do foolish things and pay for it the rest of their lives.
My nephew broke both his legs doing this very thing.
Nature installed that into us for a reason.
Joni Eareckson
Charles Krauthammer
So much for that...
When one of our son’s friends fell off a 4 story parking lot, after an evening of drinking with the high school friends, all I could say was “Lord, please keep my son from doing foolish things’. I think he just lost his balance. 10 years on, the guy is doing well, but it took several surgeries on his face, to get him where he is today. Nice kid, tragic accident.
What is an “open air pool”?
An outdoor pool - as opposed to an indoor pool.
Regards,
No fence, maybe. Or an outside pool.
No roof over the pool. Not enclosed.
There was a cheerleader that fell from a 5th story balcony at Penn State a few years ago - not willingly of course. Landed flat on her back on the street. (tough girl, obviously).
I think she has undergone nearly 20 surgeries over the years.
She’s alive, and walking somehow. But not the same of course.
Youth is a dangerous thing, but most of us would trade it for old age - even w/ its pitfalls. In a minute.
I guess just a large, outdoor swimming pool...
Your answer was better than mine. Swimming pools would be unlikely to be without a fence.
Found out that the Brits call an outside pool a “Lido.”
Remember in the UK Liberal Democrat means something different than the term liberal democrat in the U.S.
Nothing more than an outdoor pool....the brits have odd names for some things. A “torch” is a flashlight, a “fag” is a cigarette. They call a car hood a “bonnet”....weird.
Sad..
I have a story. I was 11 years old at the local high school pool on a beautiful summer’s day.
I saw the high dive and thought today is the day I dive off that board. At the time, I was on a swim team, a very good swimmer and thought my older brother made the dive and I wanted to keep up with him.
So up I am climbed and slowly walked out toward the end of the plank. I can still feel my toes creep the sandpaper’s board’s edge.
I looked down and thought, “just do it”.
I leaned over with my arms stretched forward and dove...
My dive somehow went into reverse as my legs went backwards, almost the opposite of a belly flop.
I felt my lower back twist sharply and unnaturally as I hit the water. Definitely lots of pain. I slowly it made it to the pools ladder and got out. I believe my youth and pliable body saved me from a serious and permanent back injury.
Later, I found out my older brother never did dive off the high dive... Afraid of heights.
He was lucky in the scheme of things.
My brother in law produces local news stories for a city with a population of 500,000 plus. He told me of a young person who dived into an empty pool at night alone and was killed. The emergency crew, thinking the pool to be full and calm - that the victim had drowned - they dived in after him and suffered serious injury, if not another death. It was cause for ordinances that now reqire greater security around all, if not most, swimming pools
Yes, in the sense that it is an actual political party but it is as it sounds. They lean ‘progressive’in the same way the Democrats do.
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