Shivering Lessons

I was skinny and not very buoyant. Swimming didn’t come naturally to me. I tended to sink, legs first. But breathing was the hardest part, since I battled hay fever and asthma. I had trouble mastering the rotating rhythm of aquatic respiration.

Head swiveled right, inhale through mouth… Face in water, exhale through nose… Head swiveled left, inhale through mouth… Face in water, exhale through nose… Or was it the other way around…

With a perpetually stuffy nose and wheezy lungs, I always ended up out of sync. I was afraid to exhale through my nose because of what might come out along with the air.

My first stint with swimming lessons took place during that summer’s chilliest week. It was dismal, drizzly and breezy. I have more memories of shivering than swimming. Everyday my mother pitied my blue lips and chattering teeth.

My parents enrolled me in swimming lessons to increase my chances of surviving childhood. I had a simpler motive for enduring the embarrassment and hypothermia. I was after the “I-Can-Swim” badge, which was the rec center’s official pass to the deep end of the pool. Frankly, swimming in the deep end didn’t matter as much to me as the status of access.

So I stood like a stick figure on the poolside concrete, shoulders huddled up under my ears, and shivered while I waited my turn to jump in. Once in the pool, the first challenge was to tread water. For me, this meant frantically flinging my limbs every which way while craning my neck to keep my face in the air. Next, I’d try to swim in a straight line from one side to the other without lapsing into the dogpaddle or sinking or getting snot on my cheek. Afterward I’d shiver beside the picnic table, not needing to chew my sandwich because the chattering of my teeth did the job automatically. And so it went, one day after another, all week long.

Naturally, a series of tests loomed at the end of the week. In addition to displaying our command of the various strokes we’d learned, we had to demonstrate our ability to save ourselves in an emergency situation. Wearing clothes over our bathing suits, we were to jump in, sink to the bottom, push off and shoot back up to the surface. Somewhere in the process we were supposed to shed the dead weight of our clothes. Then we’d tread water until the instructor told us to swim to the ladder and climb out.

We were advised to wear “play clothes” because the chlorine in the pool water might fade the colors. My Mom outfitted me in an old terrycloth shirt that I’d all but outgrown. It was literally made from towel fabric. I can only guess that she thought it would go well with the water theme.

The virtue of towels, of course, is that they absorb water. I jumped in the deep end and my shirt was instantly waterlogged. It might as well have been one of those lead vests you wear at the dentist’s office while they’re taking x-rays. It was so heavy that I couldn’t even peel it off as it lugged me to the bottom. Staring up through ten feet of water at the gray sky, the surface seemed impossibly far away.

The instructor pierced the poolwater like a dolphin and pulled me up. I clambered out onto the concrete and showed off my shivering skills, which were unmatched. I was confident that my Mom would consider my effort worth an order of fries from the snack bar.

Needless to say, there was no I-Can-Swim badge for me that year. I felt I could’ve saved myself (eventually…), but the pool staff was trained not to take any chances. I got over it; there was more to life than the deep end.

Swimming lessons fell during a sunnier week the following year. Somehow I met the requirements and got my badge. I went on to survive childhood. I confess, though, that I haven’t completely shaken my fear of getting snot on my cheek.