[Wids]

Let's see...I've had my head held underwater when my chunky little sister sat on my shoulders and expected me to keep her afloat in the pool's deep end. I've been temporarily trapped under a hot tub cover, trying to push it off from beneath. And there was that one time when my innertube WTF-pwned me by flipping on the Meramec with my legs sticking through the hole; I actually sucked in half a lungful of river water that time. Yes, that fear of drowning can be a real bloody terror. "Most peaceful way to die," my butt cleft. o.O

Umberlee should be a Greater Deity just because of how powerful and universal that palpable dread is, dangit.

We keep hearing the stories about water tortures, too. Stories like how some guy in Evilbadistan was waterboarded 20 years ago and he still curls up into a cringing fetal ball everytime it rains. Pretty wicked psychological scars there, huh?

What I'd really like to know is why waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition (if not before), but we didn't get around to naming it "waterboarding" until the past half-century or so. What were people calling it before that? :-/