There's an image that has been stuck in my mind for most of my life:
I was a very young kid who was attending a summer camp thing at a YMCA in downtown Washington, D.C.. Like most of the other kids at the camp, I didn't know how to swim. So, like many of them, I steered clear of the part of the swimming pool which was over my head. But sometimes I would do a shallow dive at the six foot marker, pointing myself toward the shallower water so that I would come up in a place where I could stand.
I was about to do just that and approached the edge of the pool where the big number 6 was painted on the floor. But when I looked into the water I was stunned to see a boy who was standing on the bottom of the pool! His arms were outstretched toward the surface and bubbles were streaming out of his mouth. He was yelling! At least that's what it looked like - I could hear nothing. But in that instant, our eyes met. Or that is the way I will forever picture it because I suppose I would have appeared as an indistinct blob to him through the water.
All of this seemed to happen over a much longer period of time than it actually was. For, in truth, in the same moment that I saw the boy, the lifeguard had dived into the water. In moments the boy was brought out of the pool and was resuscitated only a few more moments after that.
I have never had any doubts about what was going through that boy's mind in the time he spent standing on the bottom of the pool. I truly doubt that there were any thoughts, formed or otherwise, flashing through his brain. I think Bob Landry had it right. It was nothing other than complete horror.