Swimming Lessons

My childhood home has a pond in the backyard. It’s a little unkempt nowadays, but it was quite clean and usable twenty years ago.

My parents, being responsible humans who wanted their kids to safely enjoy playing in and around the pond, signed us up for swimming lessons, which were taught at the local lake by lifeguards who were probably high school students, though they looked like full adults to my kindergarten-age self. Looking back, my parents also probably had an interest in getting us out of their hair for a few hours a week during the summer.

I hated swimming lessons with a fiery passion. The lake was dark and cold, and I couldn’t see the bottom, and there were fish that nibbled on unwary toes. And like most tall people, I was an uncoordinated mess until my late teens. And for some reason, the instructors thought a front crawl- one of the more mechanically complex strokes- was the right starting point. The backstroke, which I actually liked, was verboten. It went about as well as you’d expect, which is to say, very badly.

Eventually my parents gave up, and let me stop taking lessons. I’d learned enough that I probably wouldn’t drown if I fell out of a boat, and that had to be good enough. I spent the next twenty or so years avoiding any body of water larger than a bathtub.

Until I got a gym membership recently. The facility has a pool. My husband, aka, my workout partner, used to swim a lot, and he suggested we try it out.

We did, and it worked. I discovered I’m a halfway decent swimmer, when I get to choose what I’m doing. I’m also horribly out of shape, but that’s fixable.

Realizing that I’m not actually a terrible swimmer, and that I like doing it, was a major revelation for me. Turns out, most of my hatred of swimming was actually hating the cold, other people telling me what to do, my uncoordinated self, the possibility of being eaten by the shark I was sure lurked in the tiny lake of my childhood- none of which had anything to do with the exercise itself.

I’m not sure there’s a specifically writing related lesson in this little screed, but maybe there’s something related to life in general.

If you find yourself detesting an activity, look around and make sure you’re not actually hating that awful light that gives you a headache whenever you sit at your desk. If you hate exercising, try a different pair of shoes; maybe your feet are hurting and you don’t realize it. Or maybe you’re cold; put on a sweater. Or your desk is one room over from the fridge that makes weird groaning noises whenever you sit down to pay the bills.

… Okay, maybe that’s just my fridge. I think it’s haunted. Anybody know a good exorcist?

I don’t actually mind the ghost in the fridge, but it is a random factor getting mixed up with a necessary task.

How many things does the average person hate and think we’re bad at, because we learned them under stressful conditions, or we’re currently doing that task in a crappy environment?

Further contemplation is required. Who knows?- maybe I’ll relearn to ride a bicycle next.