This isn’t a funny story, it’s an educational one.
In 2008, the annual beach vacation that my friends and I enjoy took a serious turn when five of us almost lost our lives to the sea. Well, actually, just four of us. One of us immediately bailed on the other four of us to “get help,” which vaguely translated as “watching from the shore.”
It had rained and stormed throughout the entire preceding day so the water was a little rough. Our friends who don’t stay on the beach all day had headed back to the house to get lunch, play video games or just generally get out of the sun. D-Bag, B-Real, Jughead, Sparkles, and I stayed on the beach and decided to get in the water while it was calm in front of us. Note of importance: It was calm only in front of us. Rough on the left, rough on the right, but not too bad right in front of us. I believe we even said, “Hey look, it’s calm right in front of us, we should get in!” We thought it was a sign that it was a good time to swim so that we wouldn’t get manhandled by the waves, but it was actually the ocean beckoning us to our deaths. Like a siren, that ocean.
The ocean wasn’t as calm as it initially made itself appear. As we’re taking one wave to the face after another, I couldn’t help but think “If I can just get on the other side of the breakers, this will be much more enjoyable.” As we’re bobbing about, D-Bag says he has to pee so I begin feverishly trying to get on the other side of breakers and thus up-current, decreasing my chances of being surrounded by human urine. I get on the other side of the breakers and think I’ve made a wise and educated decision, not yet realizing that the ocean was in the process of transporting me to Spain, and with quickness.
When I look back at my friends, they are MUCH further away than they should have been in a matter of a few seconds it takes to dive under a wave and resurface. As soon as I realize that they look too far away, I see D-Bag hitch a ride on a wave and a look of shocked confusion on the faces of Jughead, B-Real and Sparkles. And they are FAR away. Getting only further away. It finally hits me that we’re in a rip current and I’m a long way from shore. I’m not in what one would call “good” shape, but I can swim like a fish and the amount of water between me and the shore was daunting even to me. I don’t panic, I just start swimming (mostly) parallel to shore, as you’re supposed to. I had to put a little angle in it b/c I didn’t want to exhaust all my energy swimming 300 yards to my left before even beginning to make progress getting back to shore and tackling those breakers again.
This rip tide was huge. It seemed at first like every time I’d take a break from swimming to check my progress and catch a breath, I’d start moving back out to sea. I’d also see D-Bag on shore watching the rest of us fight for our lives against a very angry ocean. When I finally started making progress, it wasn’t so bad. Until I came upon the breakers. I was already tired from going as far as I had and I realized very suddenly that the hardest part hadn’t come yet.
To keep from taking a wave to the face, you go under water. It’s natural. I have more control of myself under the wave than when it’s hitting me. Every time I’d go under, I’d come up and a wave would be looking over me, about to break so I’d have to go under again. Or I’d surface only to be abruptly hit again. It wasn’t until this point when I started to get a little scared. No one else was going to be able to help me, we’re in a freakin rip current and while Jughead is swole, no one’s that strong…and he was in it too. I’d go under, come up long enough to fill my lungs again and then go back under. The forward progress was massively hindered to say the least. Freestyling, and not in the fun rap way, was no longer working so I thought that switching to the back stroke would be more effective since I could get more oxygen that way. I could also see when waves were going to break on me. This abated my fear a bit. It’s amazing how breathing can assuage your fears of drowning.
When my toes finally touch the sweet grain of sand on the ocean floor, I feel relief like I’d never felt before in my life. I grip the sand like I have monkey toes until I can finally be somewhat steady in the surf. I make it about knee-deep and collapse, totally spent. I look up and Jughead has made it out and he’s with D-Bag in the surf, looking at B-Real and Sparkles, who hadn’t yet come ashore and looked to be struggling. When I walk over to where the two land-walkers are, I see B-Real is holding Sparkles and looks to be trying to drag him while motioning D-Bag, Jughead and I in to help. Of course, we don’t know the extent of his struggle, so we’re motioning to him to come OUT of the water because we—well, Jughead and I at least—are tired after just getting out of a rip current. I should probably mention that Sparkles has about 80 lbs of pure mass on B-Real so to say B-Real was being challenged is a bit of an understatement. I start to see Sparkles going under and B-Real finally showing sheer exhaustion so I get a dose of adrenaline and start walking out there because they’re so close, they just need a little help and I think I can do it. You know, because I’m in such an awesome shape and totally beast. Thank God someone ran out there with his body board. Just as Rescue Boarder got to Sparkles and B-Real, B-Real found ground and was able to start walking out. We’re finally able to catch our breath and listen to D-Bag is tell us what our adventure looked like from shore. About that time, we realize we’ve drawn a very small crowd of about 3-5 people. A woman takes this moment to walk over and tell us how to find the rip tide. She almost got punched in the face. I think if Sparkles or Jughead had had more energy, they may have actually pushed her down.
As the five of us walk back, we see Boyfriend and Phoenix have walked back down to the beach to join us. Or at least where they thought we’d be. Our landing was a few tens of yards away so they didn’t see us walking back for quite some time. Boyfriend thought the five of us had gone on a walk—because we’re that kind of friends?—so he grabs my camera to take a picture of us coming back from our walk of beach bonding. He didn’t know that he was close to returning to the site where his friends once sat, never to return again. He also didn’t know that we were really close to losing a decent chunk of one family as Jughead and B-Real are brothers and Sparkles is their cousin. Sorry S-Clan, we regret to inform you that you’re three members down because we did something stupid. When we all got back, we literally crashed on our towels and chairs while Boyfriend wondered what the Hell had just happened because apparently we looked a mess. Somewhat disheveled you might say.
Boyfriend laughed after hearing the story. I don’t think you quite catch the horror if you only hear about it. I was like, you know, seriously scared I might die and I think Sparkles and B-Real thought the same thing. D-Bag, not so much. His story is that he saw me get sucked out into the ocean and knew immediately what was happening so he caught the first wave back with the intent on “helping” from shore. That left the three members of S-Clan to initially wonder what was going on as D-Bag and I are separated from the group at about equal speeds in opposite directions. There were five of us and only one person helped someone else. Three of us watched him do it though, it was special. Sparkles was lucky to have B-Real there.
So, I said earlier this was an educational story and not one for the funnies. Here’s how you don’t die in a rip current:
1. Recognize the rip current. If you do this, you don’t have to worry about any of the following steps because you won’t be stupid like we were. If it’s a rough ocean day and you notice that down the whooooooooooole beach, there’s one section that’s not rough—don’t go there. That’s a rip tide. If, in that one calm section, the water is also a slightly different color—don’t go there. That’s a rip tide. The only way that we could have been alerted to the rip tide’s presence any more clearly was if a pilot and gone over and dropped a sign that said “That’s a rip current!” with a downward arrow.
2. If you find your friend has been caught in a rip current, but you haven’t crossed the threshold yet, catch a wave back so you can "help" from shore, or at least be the one who can tell the friends and family whenever they come back why some people aren’t hanging out any more.
3. If you find you have been caught in a rip current, swim parallel to shore. This part’s serious. Don’t try to fight it because you won’t be able to. If you’ve ever been able to swim directly back to shore, you haven’t been caught in an actual rip tide. Start by swimming parallel to shore, then when you think you might be out or close to being out, start swimming at a diagonal so you’re making inland progress.
4. You can also just ride out the rip current and then swim diagonally back to shore when you’ve stopped going out to sea, thus leaving you with saved energy and no rip-current-fighting. They don’t actually go all the way to Spain, or even Bermuda, and eventually they will stop pushing you. However, I’ve never liked the idea of waiting that long when you CAN just start swimming out of it and I don’t care to find out just how far it WILL take me before it fizzles out. I’m not scared of the ocean and I’m not scared of sea creatures, but I HAVE seen Open Water—all 88 grueling minutes of awfulness—and as strong a swimmer as I am, I want to always see the shore if I’m not on a boat. I don’t recommend this step. Start swimming out of it as soon as you realize you’re in it.
5. Maybe don’t take all members of a family out in one with you? This was probably a bad idea. Maybe leave at least one person in a family somewhere safe. Just so the family has at least one in case the other members don’t make it back.
6. To that end, maybe leave one person in the group on shore if you decide to disregard of all nature’s clear signs and go into a rip current. At least to tell the others why the rest of the group hasn’t returned. I’ve wondered since 2008 how long Boyfriend and Phoenix would have waited there for us to return from our friendship walk. I picture EMS vehicles and helicopters being involved and the two of them hanging out in their chairs wondering what all the commotion was down there…
Thankfully, we all made it out safely. We bonded through this (only in story-telling, not in like, stupid ways), and we learned from this. We will work more diligently to recognize the indicators of rip currents and never again tempt the ocean. We will continue telling the story as an educational tool, just as B-Real’s fiancé, E-Money, wishes us to. Above all, we remember that we did defeat death by not panicking and (kind of) doing what we’d learned in all of our years of rip current education (i.e. reading brochures, which are in every rental house you’ll ever go in and even tell you about the whole “if the ocean looks different in one place, blah blah blah” part that we disregarded). We did not become additions to the Graveyard of the Atlantic. We survived.
And then we danced on the ruins of the stupid rip current.
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