No more remedial swimming…we’re Island Hoppers!

This past July, my friend Yegan talked me into joining her for Remedial Swimming classes. At first I was reluctant, but now I am so glad. In the beginning, not only were we both unable to swim a single stroke, but we both would have needed a lifeguard if we had accidentally fallen into water. If anyone less than a highly trained lifeguard had tried to save us, he would have become one of those sad news stories in which the attempted rescuer is dragged below the water by the panicked flailing non-swimmer. Fortunately, before anything so terrible happened, these two 40+ year old math teachers decided to swallow their pride and take swimming lessons. Now, we both can…

• Freestyle (crawl) a 25 m pool breathing on either side
• Breaststroke the length of the pool
• Dive headfirst into the pool
• Swim with clothes and shoes on (yes, Yegan, even jeans…shorts would be cheating!)
• Swim to the deep end, turn around on either axis, and swim back.
• Float/swim on our back for what seems like forever…on our back we can even steer!

Interestingly, whenever we try a new skill, it seems one of us will pick it up quickly, and the other will have a really hard time.

• Yegan naturally breathes on the left, I breathe on the right. We’re now both practicing so we can breathe on the weak side. 
• Yegan floats, I sink. Whenever we are asked to do any exercise that involves going to the bottom of the pool and staying there, I excel. I let out my air and drop effortlessly to the bottom and can sit on the floor of the pool as long as I like. When Yegan tries it, she goes down a little way and then helplessly floats to the surface. She really needs to work on this.
• Yegan has a naturally good flutter kick. I am gifted at the frog kick. Our instructor says it is because her toes naturally point, and my ankles naturally flex, making it easy for me to bend my knees out to the side and smack my legs together. Somehow, the notion of naturally pointing toes conveys a picture of grace, maybe even a ballerina….does kicking like a frog evoke such thoughts of elegance and beauty? I try not to dwell on it, lest envy take root. 
• Yegan, despite being more terrified than me in the beginning, is better at diving headfirst. She slides right into the water at a near-vertical angle. I tend to go too horizontal, almost belly-flopping at times. However, last week I discovered I was much better than Yegan at the cannonball, in which we jump up, hug our knees to our chest, and land in the water with a giant splash.

We both have plenty to work on, but we have come so far. As of last week, after 4 months of lessons, our instructor John announced that we are no longer Beachcombers—we are now Island Hoppers! Hooray! He even seemed optimistic that we could eventually reach the next grade above Island Hoppers, which is Masters. Apparently Masters swimming has higher standards than the Masters division of running, in which the only qualification is to be at least 40 years old.

While it has been wonderful to learn how to swim, perhaps the neatest thing about our swimming lessons has been that a good friend has become a better friend. If you want to grow a friendship, I highly recommend that you learn a brand-new skill together. For maximum benefit, the learning experience should involve (1) being scared together, (2) frequent laughs at one another’s failings, and (3) head-on collisions, and subsequent entanglements, in 9 feet of water, wearing nothing but spandex and silicone.

Do these things, and any friendship is bound to grow richer.