Freestyle (Not About Rap)

I don't think I meant to be contrary as a very small child, but it just so happened I hated at least two things: liquefied foods (I had sneered at pureed carrots and had moved straight on to cheerios) and getting my face wet.

So when my mother took me to swim lessons at the local YMCA, I quickly became the most difficult pupil some poor high school girl had ever coached. Actually, not coached - make that coaxed, wheedled, cajoled, and begged to go underwater. I wasn't having any of it. I had willingly donned those inflatable wings for the first four years of my life; I saw no reason to give in to gravity and submerge myself if I was strong enough to keep my eyes out of the chlorine (and by strong enough, I mean stubborn enough to hold onto the edge).

The only concession to my policy happened upon seeing a favorite baby-sitter called Suzy teaching a group across the pool. I bartered with my exasperated coach to let me switch groups. She allowed this on one condition: that I go underwater at least once. I gritted my teeth and did it, but only because I knew that Suzy waited for me and would not be so Mean / Cruel / Unfair as to make me learn to simulate drowning. And I was right. I switched groups, lessons were soon over, and I escaped without sticking my face into the dreaded deep.

That's all to say that I had made it through life until this past Wednesday not knowing how to swim. Not really. You could have thrown me in a lake and I wouldn't have drowned; I could have flailed towards a ladder; in a pinch I could have treaded water for as long as you liked. But I couldn't breathe regularly while moving in a straight line.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before I became envious of all those lucky saps who could do such things. But how had they learned? They couldn't seem to remember not knowing. When I asked my swim-capable colleagues during dinner at what age they'd learned, they breezily reminisced, "oh, about four or five."

Thinking back to my four-year-old self cutting deals with high school volunteers so that I could specifically avoid learning to swim, I wondered what my colleagues' teachers' approach had been.

"My friends just chucked me in the pool and would push me back in every time I tried to climb out."
"Yeah. I think my parents just shoved me in the water. I eventually started moving."

Well, fine. Evidently, at four, I had misinterpreted the normal way of teaching a child to swim as semi-traumatic poolside abandon and, rather than submit, had weaseled my way out of it. I'm willing to admit when I've been wrong. Plus, as I say, I was getting envious of all those people slicing their way through the water, emerging with a healthful glow one never achieves in sweaty running clothes. So I asked Bryanston's swim coach to teach me how to do the front crawl or whatever it's called.

The first time, I choked and sputtered and forgot to exhale and all that stuff. Andy took a look at my attempt to swim a length and said, "Why don't we just try your swimming a width?" That's how bad it was. But eventually, the breathing and the arm-flinging, the kicking and the head-turning sort of settled into a rhythm, and at this point (four swims later) I feel much more comfortable in the water.

I'm not quite slicing down the lane in the manner of a Bryanston Barracuda, and I don't think goggled and swim-capped is my best look. But my wheeling-and-dealing four-year-old self can take a hike, because now I know better.