Tags
challenge, faith, fears, growth, improvement, Lesson, overcoming, pool, swim, swimming, Swimming pool, Teacher
Tonight was my second swimming lesson of the year. I’m doing pretty good, considering the last time I took lessons (which was my first time) I was so scared to even get my face wet.
Tonight I was actually using the lines in the lap pool lanes for what they are for! I never knew those black lines on the wall sides of the pool were for foot placement! I not only am getting my face wet, but I’m going under without holding my nose, using correct form and pushing off the wall under water and then rising to the top and swimming!!!
Granted, I still freak out when I know I’m nearing the deeper end, but my teacher said he knows I can do it because he can see from watching me that I have the capacity already to be doing laps.
My teacher is really good too. He has tattoos on the inside of his biceps…one bicep has “Nothing Ventured” written across it, and the other “Nothing Gained.” Then he has a cross tat on his shoulder blade and I’m pretty sure a tat that says “Faith” going down the side of his ribs.
We’re working well together! And I found something I think I can do while I heal my hurt knees that is actually really fun!
Toward the end of the class I asked him about underwater swimming. I noticed he’d mentioned underwater swimming several times in last weeks lesson (our first lesson) and could see it was one of his favorites. And I’ve been working a lot on breathing while swimming. So I was wondering about underwater swimming and how that works out. I was trying to figure out how you breathe under there!
So he showed me. What bliss, what heaven under there. It was almost like skydiving (only not really.) But if I can’t jump out of a plane (with a parachute) every day then it’s probably a lot more likely that I can jump in a pool and dive that way on a more consistent basis.
Anyway, I feel happy that I’ve been working through a lot of fears this year. It seems like with every fear there is another one right in line behind it. I guess that’s ok. If I ever completely work through all of my fears I probably will be dead then? In the movie, Finding Nemo, there’s a character that says, “Just keep swimming” a lot. I always like that part.
Last week my teen daughter was with me (because she wanted to go to my lesson with me) and she kept giving me the “thumbs up” sign, which I’m sure has a lot to do with my success, actually. Because last week, wow, I was really scared. I hadn’t been in water outside of a bath or shower in over two years and hadn’t practiced my swim skills at all up to that point.
Anyway, the next fear about swimming I’d like to conquer is to go to the lap pool all on my own while it’s not lesson time and practice. I’m scared about suddenly not knowing what I’m doing, but mostly because I’m scared about pool etiquette and lane sharing and all that complicated stuff. How embarrassing to drown in front of people. I asked my teacher about it today. He explained general pool etiquette and then reassured me that most people there are actually very nice and easy to get along with, but that, “To just be honest, some people are just assholes, but you’ll be able to know which ones those are.” Lol. As he said that to me, I’m pretty sure one was standing behind and a little to the side of us waiting to get into our lane which had just become open after the reserved swim lesson time! Because that (asshole?) guy jumped in the lane next to us and went under the rope to get into the lane we’d just left after my teacher said that and waved a seemingly miffed behind at us like an otter, lol. It was kind of one of those “You had to be there.” kind of things…
All in all, it was a good lesson which I had all to myself because the guy that was a student with me for the class didn’t show up tonight. It might be that showing up is the hardest part.