Swimming lessons sucked

Growing up, my mother forced me to do a number of team oriented physical activities I had zero desire to do. One of the worst things I can remember was learning to swim. I understand the need to be able to survive in water, especially growing up in close proximity to Lake Michigan and having 2 boats in the family. But my mother would simply come home and walk into whatever room I happened to be playing toys in, and say “I signed you up for (insert sport here), you start next Wednesday”, and I would stair blankly back up at her, holding a few plastic dinosaurs or some army guys without saying a word. Later at night I would dread the coming shame and embarrassment that would befall a: shorter then average, weaker then average, Hispanic kid with no muscle structure what so ever, when faced with physical competition against 6 foot Dutch blonde people with size 13 shoes. (Our girl’s volleyball team never lost a game as long as my school existed. They’d just stand in front of the net with their hands up and block every serve from the opposing team. They always reminded me of those furry-footed creatures that lived on the Island of the Goons in the Popeye cartoons).

At first, I thought that swimming seemed more like a singular sport and that I might be able to just wade around in the shallow end and keep out of sight when they asked for relay race volunteers. Sadly, such luck would not be on my side. Right off the bat they wanted us to learn to jump in… the thought of which, my young mind was not ready to handle. (Jump in? You mean I’m all dry and warm right now and you want me to just jump in? It’s freezing for one thing, and looks deep as hell on top of that… AND well quite frankly, I’m not convinced that there aren’t any eels in there either just waiting to slither around my legs and possible eat them off). I remember kicking and screaming and raising a fuss about it, which was not easy to do in front of a bunch of super cute collage girl instructors who were just trying to make a few dollars over the summer to spend on booze and pizzas in the fall. One particular blonde instructor captured my heart in her bright red bathing suit, and after a while I began to warm up to the idea of jumping into certain death as long as she’d be there to blow precious oxygen into my lungs to save my possibly legless life after I sank the bottom and died. (Remember those eels would be starving).

Now I had been in deep water before, I was that kid at the public pool wearing those arm swimmies but still trying to pull off the cool thing… even though everyone my age was doing can-openers off the diving board without the need for self-contained inflated technology attached to their bodies. My arms were so hopelessly skinny when I was a kid that when I did jump in the water I would immediately sink while my arms shot strait up and the swimmies slide up to my equally tiny wrists. From a submerged window I would have looked like I was doing underwater jumping jacks I think.

Anyway, when the day came that I couldn’t weasel my way out of jumping into the deep end any longer, I decided that the only course of action to save my young life that I could take was to jump directly onto the young instructor while she treaded water in front of the spot I was suppose to jump into. I figured my charm and cuteness would negate any of the bruising about the head and shoulders our watery collision may cause her. My plan worked in the fact that I’m still alive and currently writing this essay. It did however make that young co-ed rather uncomfortable when my foot landed directly at the breast line of her red swimsuit and snapped down, exposing her collage aged boobs to everyone, as gravity pulled both me and her suit down into the water. I think I’ve liked girls in red bathing suits ever since that day. (High five).