Conquering a Fear
#1 of Conquering
"Ugh. My back's hurting again," a nude lion thought to himself. His name was Jeremiah, and he laid in bed sighing, waiting for his back to stop hurting. He was also thinking how it came to this. His gym teacher told the class that there was going to be a mandatory timed swimming part of the gym class' final exam in 1 week, in preparation for summer vacation. Jeremiah didn't have a problem with such an event, since he was an incredibly skilled swimmer. The problem belonged to his best friend of 13 years, Pete. Pete's problem was that he's terrified of pools.
Pete's fear of pools happened when they were both 13 years old. They had gone swimming in Jeremiah's in-ground pool at his house, with just the two of them, since Jeremiah's parents, who happened to be the owners of a large corporation, were having lunch with Pete's parents, who were the owners of a pharmaceutical company. Everything was going fine, until Jeremiah went into the house to go to the bathroom. Pete decided to see if he could reach the bottom of the pool. He reached the bottom okay, but he didn't look to where he was coming up at, causing the boar's head to hit the bottom of the diving board, knocking him out. When Jeremiah got back to the pool, he noticed Pete not moving near the bottom of the pool, and immediately dived in to rescue him. The neighbor, Ms. Perrile, who saw this happening, was a doctor in training. She immediately rushed to them to help by directing Jeremiah through CPR, and she had called 911 immediately after doing so. Pete had almost died, and would have, had Jeremiah not have dived in to save him. But ever since then, he had been terrified of pools. The aftereffect of the event was that every time Jeremiah looked at Pete, Pete would start to blush.
Pete's response at the teacher's announcement wasn't good, considering that his face went pale. What made it worse was that there was no way out of it, since it was their' senior year in high school. Jeremiah saw Pete's terrified face during class and thought, "I'm going to have to help him get over his fear."
The last bunch of days weren't working well, since the last 5 days had only gotten Pete down to the bottom step leading to the 4 ft deep part of the pool. Today was the final chance Pete had to conquer his fear, before the test tomorrow.
"Well, I better get out of bed now and down to work," Jeremiah said to himself. He already knew that Pete would probably be waiting for him downstairs by the pool. Jeremiah walked to his dresser, and fell down on the way. "My damn legs are acting up again," he said out loud.
Jeremiah's legs would be hard to move every now and then, and other times it felt hard for his legs to keep him up. He never told his parents that they did that, since it always happened for 5 minutes and then stopped. So he never really felt a need to tell anybody about it.
Jeremiah pulled himself up using the chair next to the dresser. He then pulled out his speedos, and put them on. He then walked down the stairs, almost falling on the way down, and outside to the pool.
Pete was sitting there in one of the lawn chairs, blushing as Jeremiah looked at him. Jeremiah walked up to Pete and said, "Sorry for making you wait. We need to get you to conquer your fear completely today."
Pete said, "It's okay, and our parents are eating lunch in town again today."
"That's good to know. Now to work on your fear," Jeremiah said, as he lead Pete towards the side of the pool where the deep end was. "This is going to sound incredibly extreme, but we may need to have you jump in the deep end since we're working on a time limit."
Jeremiah saw Pete look at him angrily and yelled, "NO! I'm not going to do something that will probably end up causing me to get killed! If you want somebody to do it, then do it yourself!"
Jeremiah then suddenly saw Pete's arm move and suddenly felt pain at his abdomen and felt himself falling backwards into the pool. Upon hitting the water, he realized something that made the experience even worse for him. The air had been knocked out of him, and he needed to breathe immediately. Without thinking, he tried to breathe, but only got water. He started to struggle to reach the surface, but then fell unconscious as his hand reached for it.
Jeremiah woke up to find himself lying on his bed in his room.
"Jeremiah, you're alright!" he heard.
As Jeremiah moved his head to the voice, he suddenly felt himself being hugged by Pete.
"I'm sorry!" Pete yelled while crying. "After I saw you stop moving, I got scared! I thought I was going to lose you!"
"You're lucky, you know that?" said somebody from the door.
Jeremiah turned his head and saw the next door neighbor, Dr. Perrile.
Dr. Perrile continued, "The second I heard him yell, I looked over towards your house to see you being punched in the gut by him. Next thing I know, he's diving directly into the pool. That told me that something was wrong. I got to your house in time to see him pull you out of the pool and give you CPR. Now I have to go, since the hospital has a patient in need of his pathologist. But I'll check up on you tomorrow before you go to school." Dr. Perrile then walked out the door.
"So this means that you've conquered your fear, and you'll be able to take the test tomorrow," Jeremiah said.
"I guess so," Pete responded. "But um...there's one other fear I'd like to conquer."
"Now what fear would that be?" Jeremiah asked.
Pete blushed and said, "It can wait until tomorrow."
"Then I'll see you at school then."
"Okay, see you tomorrow," Pete said, as he exited Jeremiah's room and closed the door.
"My legs are acting up again, and my back is hurting. I'm sure they'll be better in the morning," Jeremiah thought, as he started to fall asleep.