Learning to Swim

LEARNING TO SWIM

BY

NATHAN MARSHBURN

COPYRIGHT 2019

Before I take in the water, I take in her- the shapely, smooth brown legs. Her curves go all the way up her body as she lounges in a deck chair, wearing dark sunglasses and reading a shiny hardback book of some sort. She is alone- which is a good thing for me, I hope. No competition.

Then I take in the pool. Its bright blue water is purer than the color of the sky. I walk to the edge farthest from her. The markers show that the depth of the water ranges from four to eight feet. I am toward the deep end. Staring across, the width of the pool is about 20 yards. Could I make that distance holding my breath, swimming under water? I’m not sure. With practice, yeah, it could be done.

I look at the woman again. She acts like she doesn’t notice me. But then I see her steal a sideways glance over the frame of her sunglasses. She is aware of my presence as I stand in my swim trunks and sandals.

The water awaits. Ugh! Now I wish absolutely no one was around. It’s a bit scary to just jump in, but that’s the only way I know to do it and have any chance of looking cool. Hopefully, it won’t be too cold and too much of a shock. I’m not going to test it first like a wimp by sticking a toe in the water. Here we go.

I take a deep breath, careful not to gasp loudly, and jump. I sink down, but my feet don’t touch the bottom. The temperature isn’t as cold as I expected, but water shoots up my nose into my sinuses. That’s an unpleasant sensation that I have to fight through.

I’m only in the water half a second before I begin pushing hard to get to the other side. If I was able to move through the air, the motions of my arms and legs would probably be described as “flailing.” But since I am underwater, my frantic movements are slowed down somewhat. It feels like it is taking a long time to reach the opposite pool wall. I’m worried that I’m going to run out of breath.

Finally, I can make out the patterns on the tile wall, blurry as they are to my eyes. I reach above the surface of the water, my hands struggling to find the rim of the pool. My left hand finds it first, but slips off. Then I’m able to grab again with both hands, get a grip, and pull my head above the water just in time. Inhaling and exhaling deeply through my mouth, I wipe my eyes, nose and mouth with my left hand while I continue to hang onto the rim with my right. There is no one else in the water. There is still no one else sitting around the pool except for the pretty woman. I find myself staring at her.

She doesn’t return my gaze, but instead frowns and promptly closes her book. I watch in disappointment as she stands, picks up the towel from her chair and walks away.

I am left alone in this large swimming pool, though I am at a huge resort. Looking around at the empty lounge chairs and then up at the pure blue sky, I think back to another time when it would also have been useful for me to know how to swim…

I can feel the warm superman buzz beginning to take over. The summer night air helps the sensation along with the tint of the room, created by the decorative red lights. These theater people certainly know how to throw a party. I’ve been amazed at how quickly they can construct sets that interchange with each other but completely change the atmosphere of the stage.

I’m working at this music camp simply as a concessions manager, as just a summer job before I start law school. It’s a unique place, tucked away here in the mountains of North Carolina. College aged students come here to hone their craft- be it singing, acting, or playing an instrument.

And the piano player beside me has a sly smile on her face as she steals glances my way. She’s interested in me. She knows that I’m going to law school in the fall, the same law school that one of her best friends, Steve, currently attends.

“So how does this party compare to the ones you’ve been to with Steve?” I ask her.

“This is so much better,” she says.

“The decorations?” I ask.

“That, and the people. Law school parties are crowded with a bunch of sluts with big boobs.”

My face must light up at that, because she laughs.

I take a sip of my drink. “I can’t wait.”

She laughs again.

I let her wander away and mingle with some other party goers, and I do the same. But after a few minutes, I feel a touch on the bottom of my elbow. It’s her, smiling warmly.

“Hey,” she says. “Some of us are about to go down to the lake to swim.”

“Right now?” I ask. I look at my watch. It’s just past midnight.

“Sure, they do it every year here,” she replies.

“Maybe some skinny dipping?” I suggest.

She shrugs.

“Believe it or not, I can’t swim,” I tell her.

The look of disbelief on her face is memorable.

“What? How is that possible?” she asks incredulously. “Didn’t you grow up in the South?”

“This is true,” I say. “I took lessons, but they didn’t take.”

“Well, that’s really too bad,” she says.

Really too bad… Those words echo in my head as I come back to the present and watch the woman walking away from me disappear inside the hotel.

Holding on to the edge of the pool, I move toward the shallow end until my feet are able to touch the bottom. “Two opportunities lost,” I mumble to myself.

Time is no longer on my side. Each new birthday is now an unwelcome one. I feel that with each passing year, I become less attractive to the women who I am attracted to. So I would like to be able to swim with them when asked. I would like to be able to jump into a hotel swimming pool and enjoy the water without being awkward and scaring them away.

Fortunately, the town that I have recently moved to has a swimming pool that is open to the public during the summer. The rest of the year, it is only used for private parties or to host swim meets for the local high school team. Four dollars allows me to use the pool for a “lap swim,” or rather a lane on the 25 yard short track that’s been built into one half of the pool. Thankfully, the lanes gradually increase in depth from four feet to seven feet, so I don’t have to start out in water that is over my head.

Quickly, I learn that lung capacity, keeping at least some air in my lungs, is a key to staying near the surface. The lifeguards- teenagers all of them- regard me with concern as I struggle to float on my back or tread water. Despite numerous other people being in the pool, every time I look up at the tall white chairs, the lifeguards sitting in them are staring straight back at me through their sunshades. At home and at the office after work, I watch YouTube videos to see the most energy efficient swim strokes and the easiest way to tread water.

All the videos seem to agree that the breast stroke with the frog leg kick is the best way to swim without tiring yourself out. The frog leg kick is also the preferred way to tread water, along with a motion called “culling” for the hands and arms.

But despite my best efforts, I’m not able to stay afloat for long using these techniques. When I dare to move to the deeper swim lanes, I stay close to the wall or at least to the buoyant lane dividers. Inevitably, I have to grab on to one of the two after about 30 seconds to keep from going under.

Is there a way I can float with my head out of the water? So far, I haven’t discovered it. I cannot even float on my back. My legs sink first, and then I sink. Jogging has kept my legs muscle toned. There isn’t much fat there, so that’s probably why they simply don’t float at all.

I relate this problem to a skinny coworker of mine, who then gives me an important tip: “I have to move my legs to float on my back,” he says.

He sees me contemplating the idea.

“Yeah, if I just stay still, then I’ll sink.”

This advice is in stark contrast to another, portly coworker who told me “Just relax and you’ll float. I can actually go to sleep floating on my back in my swimming pool.”

So the next time in the pool, I try the skinny guy’s advice.

Yes! A success!

Slowly moving my legs in a bicycle type motion allows me to float on my back- so long as a I adjust my breathing to make sure that I am keeping my lungs full of air most of the time. My face stays out of the water- but just barely. My ears are submerged and most of my head. The pool water comes up to the edges of my eye sockets and it is only my face- what one would see of an artistic face mask mounted on a wall- that remains.

But this is not good enough. In choppy water or in the ocean waves, I will go under again. Even just lying back in the swimming pool, if I am not paying attention to my breathing, my nose can go under. Water rushes up my sinuses and instantly I begin coughing and sputtering.

This is another aspect of swimming that has caught my attention. Carefully guarding my airway is vital. If even a little water gets into my windpipe, it will make breathing difficult if not impossible and set me on a fast course to drown. My goal is to be able to get to where I can survive for over an hour in relatively calm water but without floating on my back.

Floating on my back is disorienting. The sun punishes me as I look straight up at the sky. Even with UV protective coating on my goggles, I have to keep my eyes closed most of the time. This causes me to become dizzy if I spend long periods of time floating on my back. Another problem is that you can’t see what’s coming if you are on your back. A wave, a boat, an alligator or a shark could take you out before you knew what hit you.

Treading water is the key. If I can learn to tread water without tiring myself out, then that will be a major breakthrough. But so far, the ways that YouTube says should work do not for me. If I had to survive for a couple of minutes in some rougher water, the best hope is for me to slowly swim forward with my head out of the water. I take a deep breath of air to make my torso as buoyant as possible, and let my legs flail out behind me as I use a freestyle stroke.

My legs have proven to be all but useless in the water. They cause me to sink when I float on my back if I don’t keep them in motion. When I’m trying to swim forward, they actually work against me. I bought a kickboard, but discovered that just using my legs causes me to go backwards. The lifeguards watching over the swimmers looked at me strangely as I decided just to go with it and cruised the full length of the pool backward, holding my kickboard and churning away.

But now, today in the pool things are going differently. I’m in the lane where the water comes up to just underneath my nose. This is deep enough for me to practice but not so deep that I can get into trouble. It occurs to me as I’m using the best technique I know (slowly swimming forward)- what if I don’t really make an exertion to go forward? What if I relax my stroke a little, move my legs like I was floating on my back, and just try to stay in place.

The results are like magic. I find myself treading water fairly easily. It’s just like I read on the internet. The exertion or calorie burn should be more intense than walking, but less so than going for a jog.

“I’ve been watching you. You’re almost swimming,” a blond haired lifeguard says to me from the high chair overlooking the pool.

To my amazement, I’m able to speak back to him as I tread water. “Yeah, this is sort of a unique motion that I worked out on my own.”

“It’s like you’re dog paddling, but you’re not going anywhere,” the lifeguard says.

“That’s it,” I reply.

“You’re really close to doing a swimming stroke,” he says. “You should try to do it.”

“I’m actually thrilled to be doing this right now and talking to you at the same time,” I say. “One step at a time.”

The lifeguard laughs, but I’m not sure that he understands what a breakthrough this is for me. How could he when he must not be older than 17? It’s been 40 years before I arrived at this point, and he immediately wants me to take the next leap, just a few seconds after the breakthrough.

“I can teach you lessons, just so you know,” he says. “Just 30 dollars for an hour.”

“Thanks,” I say, my attention still split between our conversation and the fact that I’m able to talk with him while in water that is over my head. “I’m actually doing pretty well working things out on my own, going at my own pace.”

“You’re doing well,” he concedes.

I continue to tread water non-stop for the next 45 minutes. I only have to get out of the pool because I need to use the restroom. But then I get back in and tread water for 30 more minutes nonstop.

The next day, back at the pool, I learn that I can hold my breath, swim underwater for a few strokes, and then tread water to breathe. I develop a pattern of roughly five and five: Five strokes under water, then stop and tread water for five breaths. Then repeat. I also practice moving from floating on my back to treading water and vice versa. In this fashion, I’m able to make my way back and forth in the deepest lane with no problems.

So now, I think I can call it. At the age of 40, I can swim!

But at the age of 40, now I find myself waiting and hoping. It was hard enough to find opportunities when I was younger. That summer at the music camp was a special time in my life- one of the happiest. But now, will another chance arise for me to go skinny dipping- or at least swimming with beautiful women? I will try. We will see.