Home Alone – Day 3

I can’t remember what kind of night I had experienced, but it was a very wet morning.  The sun was streaming though the ragged palmetto scrubs and huge live oak trees.  It’s Florida’s version of spring, or maybe autumn, and the oak trees were shedding their leaves, turning the sky into a giant blender of small, brown and yellow twirling ovals.  It was, perhaps, the first time I have ever awakened in a neighbor’s swimming pool.  My body’s alcohol content must have been ridiculously high, because I floated easily in the over-chlorinated pool.  I heard a rasping noise that seemed to be coming out of my own head, like Darth Vader with a sore throat.  I moved my head and felt pressure around my ears and my hair.  I stretched both arms forward and grasped only water; I was belly down in the pool.  How was I breathing?  I reached up and…