As summer gets ever closer and I start developing notions of spending sunny Saturday afternoons swimming in the blue atlantic off the coast of Cape Cod and flexing my ass to any eye candy on the beaches, my thoughts stray back to when I first took swimming lessons. I wasn't 5 or even 15 years old then. I grew up in Madurai, which had a lone swimming pool. I think it may have been operated by the Lion's Club. I have bicycled past that pool many times during my time there. And I barely had any interest in it other than a mild curiousity as to who was using it. So, as I passed by, I would crane my neck a bit to see over the compound wall that ran the perimeter of the club. I can't recall seeing anyone use it. Just before I immigrated to the United States, I vaguely remember hearing someone mention that that pool was closed down after someone found "something" in it...kinda like the blue humor that one would expect to see in an earlier Adam Sandler movie.
Those amazing Indians! They are exceptionally good at some things like coming up with innovative dance moves, the Sciences and making great music. But...
Anyway, fast forward to the late 90s. A few years ago after I had arrived here in the US, and the Internet was starting to become ubiquitous, I decided to take swim lessons and contacted this swim instructor through a budding website called Craigslist. We agreed on a lesson price of $30 per hour of swimming instruction. He recommended that I get a wetsuit as it was still April and the water in the outdoor pool in his apartment community, out in the burbs, would be cold. Good advice. And the "swim instructor" himself turned out to be a 14 year old kid. I wouldn't recommend doing something like this if you are an adult...which I was but then I was pretty naive: no mentors, no friends, nuthin'. I pretty much had to figure out a lot of things by myself. I am just glad I didn't get into any trouble! Yes, the lesson went well. I learnt that I couldn't tread water no matter what I did. I kept sinking (in 5 feet of water) like a shark that had given up...
A couple of weeks later, I joined the YMCA in Quincy because I wanted to start practicing my new found skills using their indoor pool. I decided to take one more swim lesson. Y'know. Just to be on the safe side. Again I couldn't tread water. Other than that, the lesson went well. But after seeing the video above, I remember what did make me feel very subconscious during my swim lesson at the YMCA: the wetsuit I had on...while everyone else was in swim shorts!
