"You must drink at least two cups of swimming pool water in learning to swim" - Yep that's what I learnt on the first day, the lifeguard who was more than happy to give me swimming instruction revealed to me... well not in those same words. But that wasn't the first thing I realized, you see I had grown up practicing stuff like flotation in the bath tub and I knew the secret to floating was to let myself go, release my weight on the water and hey it worked. Now here I was standing 5ft deep in water and as I walked through it practicing my strokes as advised, I wondered how to get my heavy legs suspended while I did the swim. I'd like to add that in the pool with me was a friend of mine called Michael. Well Michael already knew a thing or two about swimming and he was doing the freestyle swimming, on the shallow side too, but suspended as far as I could see.
So I had to overcome this, how to get myself "flying" through the waters, legs and body totally suspended. I would walk through, stroking in freestyle mode and then holding the sides of the pool to practice the legs paddle. Walk through stroking with my hands, suspend at the sides and paddle. I must have done that for 30mins before I decided to try out the combination and yes I had my first couple of gulps of pool water. It became a continuous cycle of STROKE-PADDLE-COMBINE-DRINK until I decided to try a different style. A swimming frog had long ago caught my fancy and I remember thinking "how awesome" and here was my chance to try that out. It turned out to be the best decision of my life... well not number one best but it does rank very high up on the list. So I went to the side to do the "Kick" involved in the breaststroke (yeah it's called a breaststroke), then i spent some time doing the strokes while walking through. There's that moment when you know you can do this, you know you have made some progress and I felt it as I was about to test run this new system, all the while with the nudging of my unofficial instructor-the lifeguard. And just like that, I was swimming; kicking, stroking, pushing, call it what you may, I went from one end to the other... suspended in that liquid (5meters wide) and I knew I had made progress on just day one. Didn't wanna get too ambitious but something told me on the inside "kid, you're gonna be one heck of a swimmer" Lemme say at this point that jumping into that water felt like homecoming for me.
Lesson learnt, when opportunity meets anticipation, it's all in your hands to make the most of it and be ready. Wouldn't say I was so prepared for this, but much of my observations did come to play and while I discarded some preconceived notions, some helped me much. This one, is dedicated to that frog I watched swim away from me.... I'm not sure now if I went through with my intentions towards that frog on that fateful rainy day.... what I was sixteen :-p
