A human’s natural instinct is to be somewhere safe; it is this reason that people constantly search for security systems, banks that protect money however securely, and some people go as far as to carry weapons and pepper spray with them, all for what: protection.

Sometimes, the safety and stability does not come in forms of items or services. I was soon to discover that I had neglected some of the safeties that the world had given me: for one, gravity.

I was at swimming practice, just finishing up a few laps of an intensive stroke.

One kick, another kick, I thought to myself. Steady does it. I looked up, and bam: I was at the wall.

“Hop out!” our coach called to us, and we all got out and stood on the bulkheads.

Now, the bulkheads are two long bars of metal and about the width of a desk. They stretched from one side of the swimming pool to the other, and because the swimming pool was a rectangular long shape, it went across the short middle and helped people cross.

But this was the summertime, so they had moved the bulkheads to one end of the swimming pool. Instead of two 25-yard swimming pools, we now had one 50-meter swimming pool (yes, notice the yard-to-meter change).

So we were now standing on the bulkhead, which is little more than beams of steel held by what I hoped was an even stronger piece of steel, 25 yards wide. So with around twenty people on it, it did what anyone would do if it were a person: it wobbled.

Fwoooooshh, it went, quite quietly, but if one perked up their ears and shielded them from the bustle of the other swimmers, it was definitely there.

And even if you couldn’t hear it, you could feel it. The entire structure was shaking up and down.

“Yippee!” someone’s voice said, breaking out of the quiet. Someone was jumping on the crack between the two bulkheads (placed side by side). One wobbled to the other.

“Oh, stop it!” someone moaned. No one listened, and everyone either stepped onto solid land or began standing on the crack, shaking it.

Our coach rolled her eyes. “Oh, please,” she said.

“It’s not that bad! Join us,” someone said, but suddenly with a wrong step they fell into the water.

Our coach leaned over, cautiously, afraid for them, but they got out, laughing, and said, “I better get to solid land.”