Forced to sit in the dunk tank, made it look like I drowned to death when someone hit the target

In high school I was part of the mathletes. I was sort of the odd one out: everyone was pretty mean to me because, unlike them, I was a really bad student who wasn’t very good at math. Simply put, I was the pariah of the pariahs. I only stayed because I was fascinated by the math I did get, and wanted to be around people doing math I didn’t get in hopes that one day I would.

During the extracurricular carnival, every club in our school hosted an activity or booth in our school yard for a night of fun for the local community. The mathletes traditionally did a dunk tank.

Now, i was terrified of water. And everyone knew that because I would never take showers after gym class and explained to everyone who complained that I had a phobia.

On carnival night, the mathletes being the dicks they were, asked me “test out” the dunk tank. They said they just needed to make sure the seat was holding weight as they “had problems with that in the past.” When I got in the seat, they locked the door and all started laughing which I should have seen coming. I begged them to let me out and started hyperventilating, but no one could hear me through the soundproof glass.

Tears were streaming down my face and my entire body was shivering wildly. Yet no one cared. I yelled until my voice was raw. Again, no one cared. The whole experience was so traumatic that my memory is really fuzzy for a lot of it. I don’t remember how long after being locked in that a line of children had assembled in front of the tank, ready to throw the ball at the target. I do remember peeing my pants after the first kid threw the ball and missed by an inch. I tried to beg each kid to stop by putting my hands together in the “please” formation, but they just laughed because I guess they thought I was acting.

I also remember that it was a girl who stepped up and finally hit the target. I reached out for something to hold onto, but there was nothing and down into the water I went.

I made a split second decision to get everyone back by pretending to drown. That was easy, since my natural instinct was already to flail my arms. I did that for like 30 seconds really dramatically, then I stopped moving. They pulled me out of there really quickly and I played dead. One of the mathletes felt for my heartbeat in the entirely wrong place and declared to everyone that my heart wasn’t beating. It helped that my skin was already blue from the fear I had experienced. Pretty soon I heard all the mathletes crying and saying they killed me.

It was right as someone was about to call an ambulance that I took a huge gasp of air and pretended to be alive again. They huddled around me and asked if I was okay and began their parade of apologies. I gave them all the finger and told them that they almost killed me in front of a bunch of children, and that they were all going to probably be expelled. I said “good luck, disphits” and left.

I’m thankful for them, to be honest. That experience made me realize the water wasn’t so bad and I now swim laps every weekend. And hey, guess who is getting their degree in advanced math this year. those kids didn’t get expelled but they got in to huge trouble, and some of the seniors who had got into prestigious schools had their admissions rescinded. So I’d say I traumatized them back, and got over my trauma in the meantime 😁