Memory Snapshot Short Story

Memory Snapshot I thought to myself, I did not die on the last one. I think I may have a chance at living. Let me just begin by saying, that was complete wishful thinking. I was in my own world up in my brain. Let's get back to reality.
My legs were shook like they never had before and in any normal situation I would be sweating but it was too cold for that. I saw the end of the diving board, I heard the sound of the board hitting the fulcrum as I jumped off the board to complete my dive. The dive I was about to meet with disaster was a Back 1 ½ Somersault in the Pike Position. This is when you do one and a half back flips and you land on your try head. Try was the key word in that previous statement. I felt my legs come up far too slowly and I felt myself jump to
far back. In diving, that is really bad. Two very undesirable words went through my thick head at that moment. “Good God!.”
I felt almost as slow as a prius driver on the freeway.
I knew it would be a disaster of some sort but I wasn’t sure how bad it would be. I got lost in my dive due to the extreme slowness and I did not know where I was in the flip. So I made the dumb decision to press out and prepare for the entry. That was the biggest mistake I had ever made. I landed as flat as someone could possibly be on my back on the water. Two simple words went through my aching head, Are you kidding me.
As I laid there flat, I could feel the excruciating pain spreading to possible every single possible part of my body. I could barely move and I could barely speak. Also the wind was knocked out of me so it was hard to breath . The worried divers’ big and serious eyes told me that they knew what happened and it was no small deal. As I felt the excruciating pain spread, I knew it would be too difficult to actually swim over and get out of the pool. I floated without moving to the side of the pool where I barely crawled out onto the cold pool deck that made my back sting even more. As I floated over to the side of the pool my rather chubby diving coach. His big and concerned eyes stared at me. Then, almost immediately, he changed his expression and asked me, “Jack are you okay?” I looked at him like he was a demented creature. I thought, “I landed flat as anyone possibly could and he asked if I was alright. I did not bother to answer. The pain was not getting any better. It got worse when I got out of the water with the cool fall winds blew against my body. My back was already welting. I looked in the mirror and saw red and purple marks and bumps appearing and began growing in size.4 The welting lasted for about a weeks it was red for a good few months. I had the worst headache ever. I also had another ghastly prospect weighing on my mind. I thought my coach was bound to force me to do the dive again. I was mainly now scared of that. My back hurt like it never had before and my head felt like the world’s strongest man got a baseball bat and whacked me in the head with no sense of mercy.
The head coach pretty much saved me from doing another. He surprisingly understood. He is Russian and grew up in the terrible days of the USSR. They had strict coaches and extremely strict diving sessions.
He said to me in his Russian accent, “Jack, why did you do that?”
I did not know how to respond to that question. I just did it.
He said sarcastically, “Don’t do that again.” When he finished talking he looked at my back.
He saw the terrible welts and said to go ice for at least half an hour. I iced my back while people got pictures of the gruesome wounds. When I got back into the water it still hurt. I first got into the hot tub and felt the hot water sting my back and shoulders. It was almost unbearable. I jumped into the water at felt the cold water also irritate the wounds on my back. I knew that redoing that dive was going to be extremely painful no matter how I would land. I was obviously frightened to death to redo the dive. However, my coach made my prep (practice an easier dive that will prepare someone for an even harder dive) a harder dive. This dive was a Back Two and Half in the Tuck Position. This was the same dive but just adding one extra flip. I did not wish to argue with him so I did a few of those and unsurprisingly smacked again. When I hit the water that time I did not care that it hurt art because at that point I was very used to smacking and it seemed normal. Luckily, this one was not nearly as pain as the previous one. However, it added to the excruciating bruising back of
mine.
The worst thing that?” came out of this event was that ever since that event two years ago, I have been afraid to do that dive and have not done it since. I sometimes wish my coach made me go back up there and do it again so I was not so afraid to get back to it. Sometimes when you heart yourself trying to do something difficult, it is better to just get back up there, forget about the pain, and just do it.