I was standing in the basement at a white and red metal table with chrome legs that was facing the basement's west wall, with the stairs to the basement behind me. I was playing with an 8" plastic cupie doll that had a mint green and dark green crocheted dress and bonnet on it. The dark green satin bonnet strings were knotted and I couldn't get the knot undone. I started calling to my mother for help to get the knot out and I heard our family dog (Collie and German Shepard mix), who was lying at the foot of the stairs, start to growl.

Over the years I thought I would never forget this experience, yet I have forgotten a lot of the"pictures" that occurred during the drowning accident. Therefore, I can only put down a scanty portion of what happened.

 

I had quit smoking three months prior and of course I gained weight since everything I put between my teeth tasted so very good. My "47th" birthday came and I told myself I needed to loose weight. Well, I put my running shoes on and off I went.

It was September 1998 at around midnight. I had just turned 45 about a month prior. I was home writing DOS basic computer programs on a 486 running Win95 and smoking heavily as usual, approximately two packs a day. I had recently quit driving a taxi and in the process of getting my "Taxi Directory" printed and sold. It was just dawning on me that I would make next to nothing on the venture after all my work, since the purchase price was barely covering the materials and expenses. Before that, my Japanese translation business had also bombed, and I had no other readily available options. I was very depressed about this for some time.