As a little kid, I had a weird relationship with swimming. Due to a combination of fear and my mother’s schedule conflicts, I didn’t attend lessons at the city pool as had my older brothers. They started at the age of five and got the hang of it fairly quickly. They were trusted to go to the pool with their friends, leaving me behind.
Instead of formal lessons, my father decided he would teach me, and took me on a few weekends to the YMCA, where men swam naked. This being my father’s swim class, I swam naked, too.
My father thought it was fine to be naked with other men, and I was kind of okay with it until a couple of other men entered the pool wearing swim trunks. Then I felt odd about it. Soon, the lessons ended for reasons I don’t remember, but I’m sure it was related to me feeling weird about it and my father’s scheduling conflicts.
Despite the abbreviated training, I managed to learn how to swim under water, wiggling like an eel. I didn’t mind having my face under water, and came to enjoy swimming. That was enough to get me into the city pool.
Summers at the city pool were busy with kids of all ages crowded into the water, splashing, chasing, swimming. All of that chaos happened under a chlorine-infused miasma hanging just above the choppy water. I kept to the shallow end, not confident in the deeper areas where the rowdy kids rough-housed, taking turns on the diving boards.
One day, as I swam under water, I bumped a bigger, older boy. As I surfaced for a breath of air, he shoved my head under and I sucked water into my lungs.
In a panic, I made it to the edge, coughing up the water, some blood, and an orange substance over the next couple of minutes. I called to the lifeguard to complain about this transgression. The lifeguard, a teenage girl perched on a chair ten feet above the concrete, looked over at me but didn’t react.
This was 1973 and the blood was not a concern back then. Not even the orange stuff got her to raise her sunglasses for a closer look. She just shrugged and shifted the towel shading her legs.
I crawled out of the pool and didn’t return again.
That pattern of shaky beginnings, mildly traumatic interruption, and complete abandonment has repeated in my life more times than I like to admit. The Picayune is no place to diagnose my various character flaws, but suffice to say I’ve spent a significant portion of this second half of my life trying to recover these lost opportunities.
I finally learned to swim properly about ten years ago–in a controlled environment–and I’m really glad I did. I’m not good at swimming by any measure, but it’s fun when the opportunity arises. If golf, tennis or hiking is something you wish you’d done more of, I encourage you to make a little time for it. It might be fun!
There’s no pithy advice I’d dare offer, like “Just do it,” or “Go for it.” Like if you have a fear of snakes thanks to an incident at a road-side “zoo” along I-75 in Georgia, you shouldn’t try to overcome that fear by jumping into a pit of vipers.
For lasting success, you need to approach it carefully, pressing the boundaries of your comfort, until you master this skill or activity.
But if it involves being naked with strangers, well, I’m not here to judge so as long as you’re having fun with consenting adults, then by all means “go for it.”
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’m still plugging away at the psychological thriller (on a third draft) and the satirical crime story set in a business office (about 30,000 words in). These stories are obverse and reverse of the same coin, a story I started many years ago, and which I cleaved in two to better tell the similar yet different themes that rattled around my head.
Maybe You’d Like
I’m in two group promos at the moment. The first is called Fantastic Fiction. Take a look at some science fiction and see if there’s one that looks fun:
The second is called Starlight, with more of a science fiction theme:
Next Picayune
Next time I’ll have some other recommendations, and I’ll share the cover of the psychological thriller.
Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune
All the best,
–mickey
P.S. If you signed up for an advance review copy of one of my novels, or the Welcome to Willieville reader magnet, leaving a review would help me out! Thanks!!