Near Death on the High Seas

Oh, my god, I'm exhausted. Last night it was the mid-1800s and I was traveling across the Atlantic in a wooden ship, a small boy in my charge. All went rather smoothly until the most enormous hurricane in the history of hurricanes whipped up, and then holy mother of mary. As somebody who is actually a little bit scared of waves (read: kind of terrified), and thus has visualized some pretty horrific wave-and-storm scenarios, in my wildest imaginings I've never imagined waves that tall, that huge, that black and mighty. It was like standing at the base of Everest and looking up, except Everest was about to crash down upon your head. The ship I was on felt like a little rubber ducky on the water, and while sometimes I was being me, in the ship, trying to save the little boy and bail water as fast as I could, sometimes I was outside the ship directing the action through the sheer force of my will. I commanded the ship to rise higher upon the waves, pushing it up as hard as I could, trying to get to the top. I forced the ship to scud right instead of left to avoid the swirling trough that would capsize the boat and drown us all. I thrashed and rolled around so much that I kicked all the sheets off the bed, I bit the inside of my lip so hard I bled, and when I woke up in the morning I had a prolonged moment of not knowing where in the world I was, what day it was, even really who I was. But I'll tell you what, that hurricane did not overturn that ship, and I managed to save the little boy, too. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a nap.