Help!

Too exhausted to windsurf to shore, I drop mast, submerge, wrap my arms around the bow, and use what energy I have left to slowly flutter kick toward land. Then something nibbles on my left foot.

It’s Jaws! Its 300 pointy teeth about to rip my leg out its socket. I furiously kick to escape.

Oh shit, I hurt myself. My left limb is lifeless, not part of me, meandering at the will of the waters. But I still feel the nibbling — now on my other foot, then on my arms, my back, my neck. I turn my head to face the monster. It’s not Jaws.

It’s fucking seagrass.

I want to beat myself to a pulp. Maybe rip that fauna out its roots to rout my temper. I can’t believe my stupid knee-jerk reaction. At least I’m not stupid enough to desert my floating board to pummel paltry plants.

I must somehow pacify my anxious mind. Either that or have a panic attack. Pass out. Drown. I defer to Galveston Bay’s placid waters.

A moment of calm quells my self-loathing.

Then reality sets in: a dull throbbing pain, growing by the second from the side of my kneecap. But it’s nothing compared to my impending trauma.

Screaming for help.

I’ve never asked for help. In all my thirty-eight years I have not.

The first time I resist asking for it I’m six years old, and taking a running leap off a neighbor’s garage roof to a tree limb that, on my successfully grabbing it, breaks.

I pound the ground with my shoulders and head (a concussion I’m later told), and with the world whirling horrifically around me I know I hurt myself big time.

Yet rather than cry Help me Mommy, help me! I attempt to follow in her footsteps — a divorced working woman who wants to show the world she doesn’t need anyone’s help.

I push and wiggle the branch away. Roll over. Get on all fours. Then to my feet. And wobble like a drunk to a clothesline leading to our garage apartment to steady myself. But the line’s sag adds a horizontal pitch like I’m on a wild mouse ride that twists while violently jerking me around.

Holding the line tight as a vice, I pull my rubbery legs forward — left … then right, left … then right, left … then right.

Just when I think I might get away with it, coming from the window of mom’s kitchenette is her voice crying out like a hawk’s scary screech Pawlll-Pawlll-Pawlll…

I’m at the end of the clothesline, and know from memory that the stairs to our garage apartment are a few feet away. But the momentum from dropping my spent arms sends me face down.

Green blades of Houston’s St. Augustine grass fill my field of vision. I hear our screen door squeak open, slam shut, and the thumpety-thump-thumps of mom’s speeding sure-footed steps down the wooden stairs get louder and louder.

I’m out cold.

I don’t come to gently. But roughly: speeding flat on my back, my eyes assaulted by harsh fluorescent tubes. One after another after another. All while rattling wheels below me make me feel I’m going to fall off and pound the ground again.

Smelling the stink of rubbing alcohol makes me want to hold my nose. But I can’t. I’m strapped in.

I come to a jolting stop. A hostile beam of light worsens my already pained pupils. A fat forefinger and thumb keep my lids from shutting from an onslaught of a now swirling beam. If this is help, I’ll never ask for it.

With no mom to lift me from the bay’s waters as she had from the lawn of my childhood, I somehow must sever the shackles from my lifelong independence. If I don’t, and don’t do it soon, my arms will eventually fatigue as they had from that clothesline, and I’ll sink to my death.

I take three deep breaths as if I’m going to lift a barbell twice my body weight over my head. And yet, with all my girting, I exhale a feeble “Hea,” followed by a high-pitched “Hel.” Then I whisper “hellllp” as if it’s my last breath.

But by completing the actual word, my sense of achievement reignites my adrenalin and I summon up “Helllllp,” and the more personal “Help meeee!”

Repeating it again and again, and feeling freer with my every call, “Help meeee!” “Help meeee!” And then with the lower range of my tenor voice I roar out “Help meeee!” that’s met with the distant sound of an outboard cranking up, like kettle drums punctuating my deep chorus: “Help meeee!” BOOM-BOOM, “Help meeee!” BOOM-BOOM-BOOM “Help meeee!” BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM…ah, the loud bully of a backfiring engine and threatening stench of gasoline fumes couldn’t be more welcome.

I’m not sure about the two greasy, heavy-set men smelling of beer and pot. But that feeling turns to relief as one of them powerfully clutches and carefully hoists my upper body while the other gently lifts my legs.

As we speed to shore, I’m bounced around, but feel something gently washing over me. Something that becomes more memorable than my approaching four-hour knee surgery and six months of physical therapy: that two complete strangers set me free from my habitually saying “Thanks, I got this.” Or screaming in the soundproof vault of my psyche Whatcha think I am, a pussy?

In no way did I feel they judged me weak. Or judged me at all. They simply and selflessly helped me.

Just for the asking.