I saw you - you look like a swimmer
Last year I made a New Year’s resolution to learn to swim.
I didn’t really intend to keep it, I guess. I don’t put much stock in resolutions generally, using them more as guidelines or wistful ideas rather than concrete goals with hard-and-fast twelve month deadlines. I vaguely thought I might sign up for swim lessons at the Embarcadero Y, but they were like $200 so I kept putting it off – apparently, acquiring the ability to not drown when faced with over-my-head water was not worth fifty trips to Jamba Juice.
But it’s embarrassing not being able to swim. Everyone just expects you can (“Didn’t you grow up on the West coast?”), and when you have to raise your hand when the kayak tour guide wants to know who he needs to pay careful attention to so he doesn’t get sued, it gets a little old. Also maybe it would help out with the whole phobia thing? So I thought I should probably at least make an effort, or pretend like I might think about making an effort. Classic resolution approach, there.
On the very last day of 2011, without even thinking about my “resolution,” I learned breast stroke. Joel gave me some pointers and I managed to swim from one end of my little Thai rooftop pool to the other and called it a win. I didn’t even realize until we were all talking about resolutions for 2012 later that night that I’d actually fulfilled mine for 2011. I could do it! I could move myself around in water!
My new skills were put to the test three days later on a sailing + snorkeling trip around the islands in Phang Nga Bay, in Southern Thailand. Suddenly I had to swim around in real water, with real salt, where real sharks sometimes eat people (in that movie The Beach, anyway), and put my real face in the water and look around at that really terrifying world.
I was not the most confident. Looking in the water was hard - I wouldn’t even do it the first day - but when on the second day we started out from the shore in water I could stand in (thus not likely to have many sharks), I bit the bullet and floated around to look at fishes for a little while. It was nice! Still scary, I wouldn’t go out very far and almost definitely ruined Joel’s fun making him babysit me, but it was a huge step. The next day I went in deeper water with some of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen - and it was hard, and scary, and I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have given it was some of the best snorkeling Joel’s family had ever seen - and it was great.
This is such a huge step forward! I have been so crippled not being able to swim, so many fun things I’ve never done. So now I have to practice practice and get better and less scared. Big steps. 2012 is going to be a good year.
