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THE ADVENTURES OF I-GIRL
CHAPTER TWO – VERSION ONE
HOW I DROWNED
In the summer of 2002, my family went on a vacation to Italy and Greece. We spent about three weeks there.
Up to that time, probably the worst three weeks of my life.
"You should be grateful," my Father explained. "When I was your age, I never had an opportunity like this to learn about my heritage."
By which he means, Greek. As far as I know, I have no Italian ancestors at all. Which is OK with me, because Greece may be boring, but Italy is creepy.
Take Venice, for example. It is supposed to be this great party destination, and from a distance looks pretty beautiful. But close-up, everything is falling apart. Concrete and plaster has fallen from a lot of the walls, exposing the bricks underneath. And if you run your finger along the mortar between two bricks, the mortar crumbles like old cheese. Everything is damp, and a little mildewed, and sometimes a lot rotted. There are bird dropping everywhere. There are insects everywhere. Flies are on everything, and are especially attracted to the food outdoors. Mosquitoes or gnats or something small that bites are everywhere, too.
Compare Disneyland. Everything there is absolutely spotlessly clean. Disturbingly clean. Obsessive-compulsively clean. In fact, take a look a Geppetto's house, and you will see that the dirt there is painted on.
Venice is exactly the opposite. It is the cleanness that's imaginary. There is also a universal creepiness to the place. Everywhere there are strange, glimmering reflections from the green water, and strange, glimmering shadows.
There are also gondoliers.
Naturally, being tourists, we had to take a gondola ride in Venice. You might picture a gondolier as young, handsome Italian man, dressed in a colorful native costume. You might want to picture that young, handsome Italian man, only about ninety years older. These men were not just old, they were mummified. Picture Sarumon from the Lord of the Rings movie in a straw hat. They also sing while they row. I don't speak any
Italian, but the songs they sing are the saddest and gloomiest I have ever heard in my life.
I imagine if you translated a gondolier's song, it would go something like this:
Here I am, all alone
Rowing this stupid boat
They don't pay me enough to do this
Come see my creepy city
Which in a hundred years will be gone
Drowned underwater anyway
I remember a hundred years ago, when I was a young man
This was a beautiful city then
Not half as creepy as it is now
Come see my creepy city
And when you leave I will be all alone again
My Father and I went in one boat, with some other tourists, my Mom and my little brother Timmy went in another boat, with some other tourists. You would think that a hyper-active six-year-old in a gondola would be 100% disaster, but you would be worrying about the wrong boat. The adventure begins. As with most of my adventures, it begins with me doing something stupid.
Venice and the gondoliers may be creepy, but floating along just watching the scenery is way boring. So, I wanted to get my CD player out of my backpack. In order to do this, I had to stand up in the boat and take off my life-jacket. My Father said, "Susan, sit down. Susan, stop it. Susan, I am serious. SUSAN!"
I must have hit my head on something when I fell out of the boat, because I do not actually remember falling out of the boat, and what I do remember seems dreamy and strange. I dreamed I was falling, and I seemed to be falling for a very long time, hours and hours, or even days. When I woke up, I didn't know where I was, and after a few seconds, I still didn't know where I was.
Imagine yourself waking up alone in the darkest closet you have ever been in. Now imagine that the closet is filled to the top with water. This was me. The only explanation I can think of for my situation is that I actually floated underneath the city of Venice for a few seconds. I was completely lost and disoriented in the inky black water.
To say I panicked is, technically, in literary terms, an understatement. I have never been so terrified in my whole life, and I hope that I will never be so terrified again. I thought, "So this is it, I'm going to die," over and over again. In fact, I couldn't think of anything else. My lungs were screaming "Breathe! Breathe!' and my brain was going, "Don't you dare breathe!" and my heart was pounding in my ears and making little green and purple flashes of light behind my eyes. Then, suddenly, something weird happened. I became completely calm. I thought, "It's OK, I don't need to breathe anymore. I'm going to die now, and it's OK," and I started to say goodbye in my head to my Mom and my Father and my little brother Timmy and all my friends and life in general.
Then the most unbelievable thing happened. They pulled me out.
Or rather, he pulled me out. It was another mummy gondolier. He laid me in the bottom of his empty boat, and moved toward shore. He didn't say a word, but threw me out onto the cobblestones like a big fish, and moved back out into the canals.
There was a small crowd on the street where I was lying, and they pulled away from me like I had leprosy, or something. I stood up, and looked out at the gondolier who rescued me, rowing away, and then at the blurry crowd around me. I had lost my glasses. Then, in a completely irrational way, I panicked again.
I still didn't know exactly where I was, or where my family was. I was still pretty much alone in a strange country where I didn't speak the language. No one seemed to want to help me, and whatever that strange calm was that came over me underwater had worn off. It was probably another stupid thing to do, but I turned and ran. I ran far enough that I was back among houses, and when I turned a corner, I met the biggest, meanest-looking pit bulls I had ever seen. They barked and growled, and once more my brain sent me the message, "So this is it, I'm going to die now."
I wish to point out, however, that the terror of being torn to bloody pieces by viscous rabid dogs at this point, did not compare with my previous terror of drowning alone in absolute blackness.
Then this little blonde (!) girl, my age or maybe a little younger, comes out on a doorstep and starts breaking up a loaf of bread and throwing it at the dogs, apparently her dogs. They quiet down, and I back off, then turn and run like crazy again, this time right into my Mom, who is crying. Just like me.
Altogether, I guess that from the time I stood up in the boat until the time my Mom found me, was ten or fifteen minutes.
At this point, I need to tell you the weirdest part of this story, which you have to believe, but which I am not going to try to explain, because I don't know. As I mentioned, I lost my glasses underwater. You might have guessed that I also lost my life jacket, and my backpack, including my CD player and my Mom's digital camera. I also lost my shoes and socks and every other piece of clothing I was wearing at the time.
So there I was, eleven years old, barefoot and naked on the streets of Venice, shivering under the late-afternoon sun, with my Mom trying to dry me off, keep me warm, and cover me up with a red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth.
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