Fight or flight is an animal response, but not really. Not that those two emotional responses don’t boil up inside you, but that it’s a misnomer. Fight means you face your adversary, whatever it is, head on, while flight means you avoid confrontation, only delaying the inevitable. Having felt it, I understand what deer may feel when they hold so perfectly still in front of car headlights, staring down insurmountable odds of some unknown, unthinkable danger. It’s so easy to believe that fear makes your blood boil, that you explode into some response, but so often, like that deer, your blood freezes, and you don’t know what to do.

In my school we had a senior skip day. It was tradition. Every year we’d go down to the local water park and we’d see if we could beat the previous year’s high score. We’d go down one of the covered water slides, and one person would plug it up, and we’d see how many of our other high school class could fill up the slide.

The lifeguard on duty was a graduate who knew the routine. The previous year had managed a commendable fifty-six kids, it was hard to be sure, it was difficult to keep count before the weight was too much on the kids in front, and our combined mass forced everyone through.

We were going to blow that record away. That’s what I was told. We were going to reach seventy. It was a beautiful sunny day and we were all prepared, all excited. We let the guys on the football team line up first, their strength and weight would be capable of holding up the line. Then we went through, one by one, sliding down into the small space.

I was near the middle. It was a fun slide, until I slammed up against a body in front of me. It was painful for me, my heels digging into his back, and I could only imagine what it was like to him, until the next forced their way into me.

My legs went under his arms, my feet against a person two in front of him, and I braced myself with my arms against the slide, the water rushing between us.

I sat there, crammed between two people, my arms tired trying avoid becoming pressed up against the person in front of me. I remember his skin, slick and tan, and the cool water pouring passed us both, both of our mouths locked in a smile, enjoying our little prank.

I must have been there for a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The atmosphere became hot with the heat of bodies all shoved into that tiny, confined space, forcing the water up to our chins.

The laughter turned to panic. I could hear a girl scream first, and then a crack, like thunder, from behind us. Screams turned to cries to move, to let go. Then we could all feel it. Our weight was too much, and the slide began to slump.

One of the pillars holding the slide had broken away, and the slide shifted violently near the middle. I began to yell with the rest of them, pleading the people in front to let us out. My body was forced into a cramped fetal position, nearly drowning in the rushing water, my cheek against someone’s back, as people forced and fought their way through. I could hear people cry out, begging us to let go, but we were trapped just like them.

Then, hardly able to breath, caused either by the weight forced on me, or the water rising up to my eyes, I could feel it. A section has collapsed; the one directly behind me. It disconnected and teetered away from us. It leaned down and fell forward, belching out children to the concrete walkway three stories below us. It forced ours backwards, and we teetered back, and then forward. My hands braced firmly on the sides, I could feel the person behind me grab my waist, keeping him from falling.

Screams and cries for help rang out from the disconnected slide behind us. The pitches of the screams kept changing, different pitches from the boys and from the girls as each fell through, no one to hold them back, the water forcing them through the open tunnel pouring them towards the hard concrete below.

In an instant the panic subsided, and the people began to move. The person in front of me dislodged and started to slide forward, and my legs were freed. Our section had slumped down where it joined the section in front of us. It overcompensated and a sharp lip was formed where it didn’t quite line up. I slid over it with my bare back, taking with it a long swath of skin.

I laid in the pool where the slide deposited us; blood filling it up from the sharp edge that took a piece of my back. There were dozens of us, crying, screaming, or in shock.

Three kids died that day. The first two to fall suffered a broken neck and a fractured skull, the third was crushed to death by the others, dying of a collapsed chest. Another seventeen were sent to the hospital.

I have a white scar that crosses my back like a lightning bolt that always reminds me of that day. And I still have trouble in confined spaces, and sometimes when I’m in the shower—when the water runs past my face—my blood freezes, and I can’t breath.