It’s summertime in New Hampshire, the birds are chirping the flowers are blooming. The setting is Boy Scout Camp. Today my friend Castin and I sign up for a big commitment: the mile swim. Before we can swim the whole mile we must complete daily increments so the guards know we can actually do it without drowning. Each morning we must get up early before anyone else and drag ourselves down to the shore and jump into that freezing water and swim.
The days of summer go by fast and I finish each distance without a problem. Now it’s Friday morning time for the mile. Castin and I get up, change and go to the beach. We are the first two boys on  the dock. He jumps in first with me shortly after. I feel the cold embrace of the water and then something unfamiliar, there's a sharp pain in my left knee. I look down at it and see blood pouring out of it into the water. I can barely move it, I swim to the ladder and limp down the dock. A life guard see’s me and asks “What's wrong?” Does he not see my leg? I thought, I look down at it and he say’s “Oh, that's not good.” He grabs the first aid kit and sits me down on a table. He fixes me up with a couple of butterfly stitches and wraps the whole thing in gauze. The nurse drives down in her gold Honda Accord and brings me to the nurse’s hut and lays me in a bed. Where I drift off into a nice long nap, and dream about what the swim would have been like if I hadn't hit that cinder block.