Swimming

There's a pool at the hotel I work at that I can access whenever I want. On weeks like this, where it's in the 90s during the day and stays around the 70s at night, being able to take a dip is a huge luxury. Since it's open 24 hours I can theoretically go swimming whenever I want, so a dip after I get off work at 11 p.m. is totally doable. I can spend part of my days off relaxing in the cold water and doing laps! How cool is that?

The only issue, though, is that I don't really know how to swim. I kind of did a long time ago, but I'm a little out of practice for a few reasons.

When I was a young kid, around four years old or so, my Uncle Bill had a pool. My cousins, siblings, and I would swim around during the summer when we visited my grandparents dairy and my uncle's house outside of Greenfield. One day one of my cousins convinced me to jump into the pool without any of the grown-ups around. I vaguely remember it being a great idea, as I was four and exceptionally stupid, and I also remember that moment of panic when I realized I had no real clue how to swim. I flailed around a bit and eventually got plucked out of the water by my granddad (thanks, Opa), but it didn't really dissuade me from getting into the water.

No, that moment came a bit later, when I was in kindergarten I think. The school had a pool, and once the weather warmed up the students had the option to swim for PE. One day it got overcast and a bit chillier than it had been, so most of the kids opted to just sticking their feet in the water. Continuing to be an exceptionally stupid child, I was the only kid to actually swim around. I thought I was really cool and gutsy until I realized I was also really scrawny and not good at retaining body heat, so by the time I got out of the pool I was blue-lipped and hypothermic which didn't please the teacher at all. After that, I had a little shakier of a relationship with the water, but it got even worse later on.

In junior high I'd gone to the big swimming complex in Minden-Gardnerville, in Nevada, with the school. Half the school would do swim lessons while the other half had free swim, and I ended up getting swim lessons from the crazy ex-Marine guy who wanted to push every one of his students to do better in the water. When he told me to get the sinking toy thing from the deep end I tried to get it-- I really did-- but I ended up needing air before swimming all the way to the bottom, so I had to surface. The only problem was that I gasped for air before getting there, so I inhaled some water, started hyperventilating once I got out of the pool, and the next thing I know I'm waking up and getting CPR, end up on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask on my face and an IV in my arm, and I get wheeled off to the emergency room not long afterward. I missed free swim time, but I didn't die, so that was cool.

From that point I decided that swimming might be my thing and I haven't gone out of my way to go to a pool since.

However, part of me wants to try getting in the water again. It's been a long time since I've actually tried to swim (I've been in pools, sure, but only standing and freaking out in the shallow end for the most part) and it's probably been long enough to get over my fear of it. Besides, it'll probably help me build up lung capacity and some endurance for running a 5K this July, so it might be a good idea for that reason alone. Maybe sometime this weekend I'll go swimming-- or drown, or at least have a panic attack. Either way, it's been hot and I have access to a pool, so I should give it a shot just because I can.

A long string of near-drownings couldn't possibly last forever, right?