When I was seven years old, my parents’ signed me up for swim school.  It was at a sports complex my dad went to and they had a kiddie pool and a half-Olympic-sized pool.  I thought the classes would start off on the smaller pool; but, as other perplexing adult reasoning goes, it was not to be so.  The big pool was five feet deep at the sides and six feet deep at the center.  The swim coach, I don’t remember his name, was probably just 5’6” tall and so all that I would see of him above water was his bushy black hair and thick mustache.  This hairy ball floating on the water, however, was not something easily ignored.  With a stringent pitch, it barked orders at its students (there were four of us): “You, get in the pool!  You, stay on that side!”

He probably wasn’t that bad because most of his student’s learned to swim.  In fact, all of them learned to swim except, well, me.  On later sessions, while the other kids started doing laps on the width of the pool, I was still stuck to the side practicing my kicking.  At one point the coach was so exasperated with me that he had my thighs and even my arms wrapped up in floaters.  I was discomfited to say the least.  I did want to learn.  I showed up for every lesson.  I tried pulling my legs up on top of the water.  I just didn’t know how.  The floaters worked while I had them on but not when I didn’t.  I realized then that I wasn’t going to learn to swim – not there anyway.

My swim tuition was not an entire waste - I overcame my fear of water (just a couple of years prior I almost drowned in a pool).  I also learned how to dog paddle.  Someday, I thought, I would learn to swim.

Years have passed and finally last night I went back to swim school.  Jim, the swim coach, was very helpful and clear in his explanations of what I need to do in order to perform certain tasks.  It was, of course, still rudimentary stuff as it was my first session.  And, sure, I got water go up my nose several times and my ear aches a little bit even now from the swimming (a normal occurrence with me).  These are all just part of the training.  Already, I have learned a lot more from last night’s session than I had during the whole swimming course I took decades ago.  Also, I feel more like a kid now than I did back then.  After all, I am now doing what I want to do.  And this time, look ma, no floaters!