My terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad experience with swimming
I grew up in a coastal town.
I grew up in a coastal town in a house not more than twenty kilometres away from the ocean.
I grew up in a coastal town in a house not more than twenty kilometres away from one of the biggest oceans in the world, prone to angry tsunamis that routinely take back large tracts of land that humans had borrowed from Nature.
You’d have thought that this would have been reason enough for me to learn swimming. After all, in an emergency, all things considered, it is much more preferable to swim to safety than drown. Drowning is such a bore.
However, as things stood, I didn’t know how to swim. I never really felt the negative impact of not knowing this skill, primarily because I go out of my way to avoid large bodies of water.
Until one day, seized by a fit of motivation, I decided I needed to confront my demons. So immediately after switching off Netflix, napping a little and drinking a quick coffee upon waking up, I decided to learn swimming.
Preparing to swim
Step 1: I signed up for lessons at my apartment’s swimming pool. Every weekend an instructor comes over to teach swimming to the kids in my apartment. I reckoned he wouldn’t mind stretching a point.
Step 2: Next, I went out and bought a pair of swimming trunks. I managed to find a really good pair at the local Decathlon that fit me rather well and managed to smartly hide all the cellulite. In a moment of giddy excitement I even considered buying a Speedo, but then wiser counsel prevailed. After all, no one wants to scare kids and swimming instructors.
Step 3: Research. I read up a lot on swimming and realised that it was all rather simple. Human body naturally tends to float. All one needs to do, really, is just think of the water as a thick bed of air. It wants to support you and let you glide through it, and all you are supposed to do in return is not to fight it. That bit’s important. All the authoritative blogs on swimming warned me against fighting the water. One needs to work with it, not against it, much like kneading pizza dough.
Thus armed with swimming trunks, knowledge and payment receipt for 3 lessons, I presented myself at the swimming pool in time for the next class.
The instructor then took me aside for some one-on-one attention. He told me the first step was to learn to float. ‘This ought to be easy,’ I told myself. After all, the water is just a really thick bed of air. Of course, I didn’t stop to consider the fact that I can’t really float on air either. Anyway, the instructor asked me to grip the side railing with my hands, pull my legs up underneath me in a crouch and gently push my body away into the water behind me.
The trouble starts
That’s when I and the instructor ran into the first bit of trouble. We found out that I couldn’t loosen my grip on the side railing. I tried flexing my fingers. Then the instructor tried flexing my fingers. Then he tried coaxing me. Then he tried shouting at me. Then I tried shouting at him. But nothing worked. My death grip on the side railing just wouldn’t loosen. Finally the instructor cut through the Gordian knot by tickling me. I didn’t know that one could be tickled underwater. But I was, and promptly let go of the death grip to sink to the bottom of the pool.
This was followed by a series of floatation exercises, all of which I failed miserably. I found out that no matter what I did, my body just refused to float. Despite my best intentions, different muscle groups took it in turns to stiffen up and sink rigidly to the bottom each time the instructor let go of me.
Tearing the space time continuum
After several attempts at this, the exasperated instructor advised me to forget floating and try moving around underwater. This immediately led to a series of aquatic exercises just beneath the surface of the pool. I waded around the pool in an ungainly mass of limbs, circulating the chlorine water though my system and regularly wading into the legs of the squealing children in the pool. Every length of panicked lap I moved around in the pool was limited by my ability to hold my breath and pee in. The time duration of these laps progressively reduced from ten seconds to five; then to three and finally to one. At one point I was certain I was coming out of the water before I had even gone in, thus tearing the space time continuum irrevocably.
Sound travels differently underwater
Finally after one excruciatingly painful dive, the instructor had to follow me in and untangle my arms from around a child’s head and pull out my legs from another’s hands. He then gently rebuked a third kid, who was helpfully holding my head down underwater. Thus having retrieved all my errant body parts, he pulled me towards the side railing and guided my death grip onto the metal lifeline. I clung on to it with a sigh of relief. At least, I thought it was a sigh, but it could also have been a whimper. Sound travels differently underwater.
I heaved myself out of the pool, and clutching my swimming trunks tight around my waist with one hand and my sopping wet dignity with my other, trudged slowly back to my flat. Equal parts of shame and chlorine water slopped around inside me.
Epilogue:
My quest for learning swimming has not stopped. Temporary setbacks like drowning shall not discourage me. However, the lack of essential skills and tools like technique, goggles, underwater breathing apparatus and a small boat are hampering my style. No matter. Baby steps are what allowed us Keralites to get to 99% literacy and 100% inebriation. I will start with the boat.
