As someone deathly afraid of heights, any time I am standing on some sort of ledge my mind just repeats the question and horror of, “What if I fell?”

A Maine man lived out my fear Friday, Jan. 14, when he fell into the water after not seeing the end of the Maine State Pier, according to Fox23 Maine.

I have sat at the end of that pier many times in my short life and I’ve stared into the water with my stomach dropping thinking about that fall. I’ve looked around and planned my escape route back to safety on the off chance that I took the accidental plunge.

These “what if” moments have always crossed my mind in the summertime, but I never once imagined the horrific nightmare of it happening in the winter.

On the Friday morning of this incident, the water, according to Fox23 Maine, was only 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, Rick Garland was sleeping in his sailboat and heard someone screaming for help.

He reported to the news station that he saw someone splashing around trying to climb back up on the dock but without success. Garland and a nearby worker rescued him from the water and said as soon as he realized how close he was to death, he just started bawling his eyes out.

The news source asked Garland how he felt about saving someone’s life, to which he responded, “It feels good, feels good. Always does.”

That “always” is a key part of that sentence. Apparently, this is not the first time Garland has had to pull someone out of the water who fell off the pier, according to Fox23 Maine.

I can only imagine the terror of not only falling off a pier but into freezing cold water in the middle of the winter.

Thankfully the two men were nearby to help, but what will it take for Garland to stop having to fish bodies out of the pier water?

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