I live in an area that has a lot of strip mining/swimming holes. When they would strip the coal from the ground they would sometimes hit ground water and it would flood the coal pits and create an artificial lake.

When I was a kid we would always go to this one swimming hole and jump off the cliffs into the water below. Some of the cliffs could get pretty high and you would need to run and jump far out to clear the rocks under it. It was a pretty big adrenaline rush.

We were out there one summer day and there were some kids that we never seen out there before and they were being pretty reckless and not approaching the jumps the way they should have. We made friends with them and showed them how they should run up to the jump and where they want to aim in the water so that they didn't hit the shallow area. Anyway, one of these kids tried to show off by doing a back flip off one of the smaller (height) jumps and ended up clipping his feet on the side of the wall and spun down and hit his head before hitting the water.

Everyone sort of panicked, but I immediately ran over to an adjacent cliff and jumped in to get him. He was knocked unconscious and floating when I got to him (under 20 seconds) and I yelled up for someone to run and call someone for help since it was before the time of cell phones. I swam across the swimming hole with him to an area that was like a "beach" and pulled him up onto the ground. I didn't have to do any kind of CPR on him, not that I knew how, but he was bleeding a good bit. It took about 15-20 minutes before an ambulance could get to us since there were no real roads up to this place.

He ended up being fine after a few days in the hospital, but he could have easily drowned in the water. He moved a way a number of years ago, but we are Facebook friends and every now and then we will chat about it and he says thanks... pretty much when he gets drunk.

I don't think it really impacted me all that much. I think about it from time to time, but it hasn't really changed much in my life.