Swimming with the Sharks
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
When Son #2 was three years old, I signed him and his two older siblings up for swimming lessons at the local recreation center. Since a neighbor had also registered a couple of her kids, we planned to share carpooling, figuring that one mom was all the supervision needed for the six little kids who would be constantly engaged by the teenaged lifeguards teaching the classes. After the first lesson, it became obvious that learning to swim was a good deal more complicated than I expected—not because the teachers weren’t competent. The problem was—sharks.
Apparently Son #1 had spent the entire evening before the first lesson convincing his younger, innocent brother that the rec pool was infested with a pod of ferocious predators. Even at six years old, Son #1 was already displaying his uncanny gift for believable tall tales. He convinced his little brother that the rec pool was so large, sharks could lurk in the deep water without discovery. According to Son #1, scientists had revealed that the sharp-toothed giants were attracted to the splash of humans jumping off the side of the pool, the motion of swimmer’s arms and legs, and the bubbles associated with expelling breaths under water. Though Son #2 was too young to have watched the movie Jaws, he’d heard the theme music, and that was enough to convince him that his older brother knew what he was talking about.
The first lesson was a disaster. One instructor wasn’t nearly enough. Son #2 kicked and bucked and screamed so violently that eventually four young lifeguards each took one of his limbs—their plan to simultaneously lower him gently (if that was possible considering his panic) into the water on his back and calm him down. That plan lasted about 20 minutes; they finally gave up and returned my small son to me with the promise to try again next lesson. The other five kids taking lessons with him had a great time.
I spent the whole next week speaking softly to Son #2 about how sharks did not live in swimming pools. His brother was teasing him. He was perfectly safe in the water. So Son #1 upped his game. “Some people have baby sharks in their fish tanks,” he told his little brother. “When the sharks get too big for the fishbowl, their owners just flush them down the toilet.” His eyes narrowed, and he whispered, “So you’d better be careful when you pee. A shark might leap out of the toilet and bite you!” Son # 2 came to me sobbing for fear of his life—and manhood.
Four weeks of lessons. Not once did Son #2’s body ever touch the water. Son #1, on the other hand, had a delicious half hour every week yelling greetings to his little brother as he leaped off the diving board dozens of times during every lesson. It wasn’t till more than 10 years later when I saw pictures of Son #2 cliff jumping at Flaming Gorge with his Scout troop that I was finally able to relax because he obviously had learned to swim. Where? I have no idea.
But Son #2 wasn’t the only student who left the rec center with less than effective water skills. Daughter #1 ignored her younger brother’s tales of sharks, and she learned to feel reasonably comfortable in the water. Eventually, as an adult who loved the water, she installed her own swimming pool in our backyard! Once she had a chance to swim almost daily, she realized that being an average swimmer was not adequate for the generally high standards to which she normally held herself. When COVID hit, she talked Daughter #2 (who lives across a small park from us) into taking adult swimming lessons with her at the SAME pool where both of them had first learned to swim more than 30 years before.
It was perfect timing. Nobody dared using the pool during the epidemic, so every Saturday morning for about nine months, she and her sister were the only students in the class. They had two teachers—one a mature and long experienced swimming instructor; the other a young athletic girl, both of whom found it immensely entertaining to have two highly competent adult women–both respected leaders in their professional lives–splashing around in the pool with them like a couple of slightly-less-than-normally-coordinated high schoolers. Neither instructor ever missed a class—they told my daughters it was the most fun they’d ever had at their job.
Every week my daughters reported to me how their lessons were going—generally with peals of laughter and hilarious descriptions of their serious lack of athletic prowess. When they showed up, they claimed that every lifeguard on duty either patrolled the perimeter of the water or actually jumped into the pool with them, anxious to be sure that their lack of coordination in the water did not foreshadow a pending disaster.
Serious about improving, Daughter #1 began squeezing time in her schedule to watch YouTube videos which demonstrated the correct synchronization of head, arms, and breathing in between her hundreds of meetings and long hours of improving state rules for special education students across the state. Apparently, her PhD in psychology was no help whatsoever in the actual skills needed to glide smoothly through the water. But her advanced education did enable her diagnose her own lack of aquatic ability as qualifying for additional intervention! So that was a plus!
Occasionally Daughters #’s 1 and 2 still spend Saturday morning in the rec pool. Now they take Daughter #2’s own daughter, a sophomore at Copper Hills High School and a certified lifeguard, with them. When they finish each lesson, the three spend a half hour doing laps to practice that day’s skill. My granddaughter averages twice as many laps as her aunt and her mom—sometimes twice as many as both of them combined! That doesn’t seem to deter them in the least. They laugh, cheer her on, and keep moving at their steady, leisurely pace. Who knows? Son #1 could be right: moving too fast might attract the sharks at the bottom.