I...I'm not a great swimmer...We've all known that, for decades! They forced me, my school did, into swimming lessons for ten years almost and not once in all those years despite all the threat cajole humiliation embarrassment threat of drowning all of those did I ever get my head into the water for a considerable amount of time. I couldn't float, my swimming teachers had no chance of teaching me the requisite skills so they gave up on me. They tried oh deary they tried but I was so insistent on not learning it, I was so fearful of the water getting into my ears and into my nose and the nasty pungent chlorine water getting all into me and what not I never cared I didn't. I made it through somehow without learning how to float. Awful, I know. A travesty even, I'll give you that!
The first time I really learned to float and be comfortable inside water was in grad school. Only into my mid-twenties I realized maybe it's time for me to be a water creature learn to float around be friends with the blue liquid. I even paid, I PAID for the privilege of using their expensive swimming pool, despite not knowing how to swim. And I used the privilege I went in dozen times or so maybe half a dozen more. It wasn't useless experience truth be told, lots of looking at other people swimming learning to swim and learning pretty much all the skills from scratch as I lay inside water sadly impotent seeing them learn so much quicker than I imagined I ever could. Impotent and powerless. Stupid idiot incapable of ever learning anything useful. That was me, yes sirrr.
In grad school in those expensive swimming sessions all by myself I learned how to float on my back, and not drown immediately as I went into a depth beyond my height. Which was an achievement for me, someone who had lost to water and the craft of swimming. There were attempts by poor random strangers and lifeguards to teach me useful swimming skills. I never learned.
Fast forward a year or two, SB and I started going to the swimming pool of my college here in Boston. We went every other day or so, for many many weeks, two years ago. Or was three years ago, ohh man time passes by quick dunnit. Two years ago I believe it was. And I tried learning, as SB did laps after laps. I could float I became a more confident floater, but that's when the summer ended and so did our swimming sessions.
Now we're in the covid world of 2020, nothing to do everyone's social distancing and my projects my lovely personal projects are on hold because everything is uncertain and I don't want to start on them if I have to abandon them in a matter of weeks. So the best to do for me is go swim! SS and Jm took me to the pond, and as you've figured out by now thanks to my incessant postings, I'm hooked!
SS taught me to locomote while floating. I can move my legs and be more comfortable with water. I may, if there's enough guidance even finally learn to swim, in a rudimentary basic manner. It's all the ego from all these years coming back. The desperate desire to prove to my school swimming teacher I'm not a total loss, to show my friends that I finally mastered the art that they've been making fun of me for so long. To prove that I can learn and I can still improve. This dog may be old, but it can learn new tricks. And this dog is not that old, young women, single and SO ready to mingle, Hit me uppp yooo. You know where to reach me at!
Oh yeah, and I wanna be ripped too.
That's mostly it, actually. Really.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.