Once when I was a little girl about five my parents took my sister and I to the beach. They let us play near the skim and I was curious about the waves. So I went closer and the tide came in dangerously playing around my waist and then a wave unexpectedly came out of nowhere and pounded me into the sand, if my breath wasn't taken away from the force of the blow I would have choked on the salt water that flooded into my mouth and nose.

Just when I thought I was free after the initial blow from the water I was grabbed by the water and brought further out. The water crashing down across my head, since I was so little, my feet barely touched the sandy ground lifting me in a perpetual limbo of half water half air my lungs burning and panic surrounding me as I had yet to learn even how to dog paddle. I managed somehow to struggle back to land the waves still crashing over my head I was completely exhausted as I tried my hardest to kick and move my arms towards enough ground to stand on. The waves pounded over me again and again the ocean slowly dragging me back I was to tired to fight to tired to yell. I tried however, and I screamed for my parents to help but they both stood there watching me with bemused smiles. It was the ultimate nightmare why weren't my parents doing something, anything. They just stood there as I screamed for help, failing against the tide. The anger swelled up inside me and it was the only thing that kept me from falling back into the ocean tired and weak. The anger and indignation that my parents were not taking my plight seriously filled up to the top of my head I bubbled and boiled and crawled holding my breath as the waves crashed over me again and again. I made to the beach and cried and cried. Angry and sore my parents a mere ten yards away with their look of amusement causing my throat to burn redder and my welts from the waves stung even more relentlessly. A man walked by and saw me crying in the skim my breath ragged and uneven. He picked me up and brought me to my parents asking them pointedly why they didn't help me. The amused smiles wiped away from their faces and turned into horror so close to losing to me so close, the realization broke on their faces and my dad said in some sort of defense, "We thought she was playing." With my head underwater? The strongest costal pull on the pacific coast and a little girl who weighed no more than a piece of driftwood? And he thought I was playing? Even at five the anger spilled from me, if I hadn't had that spark of anger to turn into a frenzied energy and adrenaline there was no way I would have made it if I was but a mere five feet out more.

My dad wouldn't let me and Willow from that day on go past the skim. I am seventeen and a strong swimmer much stronger than a little five year old but I know never to go past a certain distance in the water. Boundaries keep me from going past a certain point in the drift even without the watchful eye of my father. Ever since I was five I knew the power of rip tides and how lucky I was.