Fear of Drowning

I share one thing with the Hollywood outlaw, The Sundance Kid. I can't swim.

No, wait. Two things. If they made a movie of my life I'd be played by whoever the young Robert Redford is today. Brad Pitt?

Okay, okay. I share one thing with The Sundance Kid. 

My mother was so embarrassed by my inability to survive a tidal wave - and we were living in Colorado at the time - or more likely, an unattended bath, that she signed me up for swimming lessons at the Security Colorado Community Center when I was 13-years old. I knew it would do no good to argue. My dad would be no help. He was a "your mom made spinach and you're going to eat it" kind of dad. Besides, my mom had already spent the registration fee. So, I resigned myself to a death by drowning. I had so much of my life ahead of me! 

I went to the first class, sitting glumly and resignedly in the back seat of our faux-wood paneled Mercury station wagon as my mom dismissed my hydrophobic dread, noting that swimming classes would be just what somebody afraid of drowning needs. (In that moment, I promised myself that I would never admit to my fear of heights in front of my mother.) I entered the boys changing room to find most of my classmates, the oldest of whom might have been 8-years old. I towered over them. They looked upon me with pity as if I was some kind of freak. Was I a gigantic, genetically-engineered 8-year old? A victim of a radiation-related growth spurt so extreme I could barely walk, let alone swim? Why wasn't I at the basketball camp instead of this swim class? 

Not only was I taller than my swim class classmates, I was also taller than the instructor, a high school girl who seemed completely unprepared for my presence. Not me, specifically, but anyone over the age of 8. Was I on the spectrum? (Nobody knew "the spectrum" as socially acceptable language for, um, quirkiness, at that point in human history, but you know what I mean by it now and I knew what she was thinking when she looked at me then.) Was I a cruel prank one of her classmates was playing on her? I dared not make eye contact with her. I had entered puberty and was painfully aware of how little control I had over certain parts of my anatomy.

To her credit, she pressed on with the class. Summer jobs. We've all had one. They all sucked.

I quickly fell behind my 8 and under classmates, none of whom seemed to understand that water can kill you. Just 3 inches of water! 

The indoor pool at the Community Center was L-shaped, with lanes marked out along the bottom of the long part of the L (Widefield High School's swim team used it for meets) and 3' and 10' diving boards stood over the short end of the L; the literal deep end. On the fateful day of my near death, we were simply going to jump off the side of the pool, and swim back up to the surface. It's something people do at pools all the time, or so I surmised. I hadn't spent a lot of time at pools but it seemed like a rudimentary pool-adjacent activity. Easy-peasy. Or at least, it seemed so as my classmates, one after the other, jumped into the pool, popped up to the surface and pulled themselves back onto the side of the pool.

My turn.

We're in the corner of the L, and I'm facing the literal deep end. The instructor is treading water, calling for me to just jump in. You can do it! I appreciate the sentiment but I'm not sure I share her confidence in me. Come on, Frankenstein! Jump in the pool, you monster! I notice the number 6 is painted on the bottom of the pool to my left (the long part of the L - the not deep end of the pool). Just 6 feet! I think. I'm 5'8". I'll hit bottom, and when my feet touch, I'll just push myself up. Easy-peasy! I inhale, hold my breath, and step off the edge of the pool. 

Into the deep end.

All these years later I realize I missed all the clues. Most importantly, "the literal deep end" clue; the only clue I really should've needed.

I did not jump into 6 feet of water, I jumped into 10 feet of water. 

My feet did not touch bottom. 

I did not just bounce up and back out of the murderous water that now surrounded me and seemingly held me fixed in its grasp as I panicked, my arms frantically flailing up and down, a motion ideal for making snow angels, but less so if trying to move directionally while under water. My brain shrieked, Nooooo! I was about to die while attempting a task I had just seen a 5-year old girl accomplish almost effortlessly. I'm going to die! Shouldn't my life - short and boring though it had been so far - be flashing before my eyes? Again, my brain shrieked, Nooooo! 

The instructor grabbed me around the waist and pushed me back up onto the side of the pool, spitting water and gasping for breath. I felt exhausted from my near death terror, grateful to be alive, and humiliated. I looked up at the horror on the faces of my tiny classmates who I think in that moment realized what I had known all along.

Water can kill you.

Yeah, okay. 

It wasn't horror. 

It was disgust.

8-year olds aren't really capable of pity.