I nearly drowned, one time.I’d been roped into going to a residential tennis competition when one of the usual girls pulled out at the last moment. If the school team didn’t send the right number of players, our place at the round-robin style contest would be forfeit, so a replacement was urgently required.My elder sister, who was deservedly on the team, was the only one of the eight of so girls who had a female sibling of the right age, so following a panicky call to my mum the night before, I was rudely awoken at 4:30am and told to pack my tennis stuff and changes of clothes for a couple of nights.Confused, but acquiescent, I did as I was told.We met the entry requirements, but I was a terrible tennis player and became markedly worse when flustered by my sister’s disdain at my abysmal performance. At the end of the (long, horrible, mortifying) competition, my personal results of the six matches were as follows: 9:0; 9:0; 9:0; 9:0; 9:0; 8:1.The other team members, led by my sister, didn’t talk to me for hours on the way home. My poor performance had devastated their hopes for a second- or third-place rosette.So, I sat alone in the back of the mini bus, feeling hot and sorry for myself, and was relieved when the driver slowed, stopped and announced that the road was flooded.We scrambled out in excitement, oohing and aahing at the floodwater that was flowing over the road, inches higher than usual. After a bit of back and forth, the adults decided that the driver would carefully ease the mini-bus over the flooded bridge (which had no protective guiderails) while the rest of us took off our shoes and socks and followed on foot.So that’s what we did.Except I fell in.Wandering too close to the upstream side, I tumbled in and was immediately pinned crushingly against the bridge by the force of the water which swept my glasses from my nose – instinctively, I caught them as they washed by!I don’t remember panicking, but I do remember feeling perplexed.How was I to get out of this pickle? I couldn’t move an arm or a leg, never mind move my body to get my feet under me to stand up.And I was beginning to feel that I would quite like to take a breath…Just as panic was starting to present itself as a possibility, there was a splash next to me. Groping hands patted me, found my armpits and hauled me away from the water’s embrace and out into the open air.It was my sister.