I get confused with lots of directions. Give me complicated instructions — turn right over there, then stop — and I’m a basket case. My mind spins in somersaults trying to understand such strange and cryptic commands. It just can’t process them.
Tell me specifically what to do with my hands — put them here, lift this way, rotate around and don’t forget to breathe — and it’s like I’ve just been told how to put the space shuttle together. My face goes blank, and sometimes I pee my pants.
It’s why I was never good at knots. The bunny goes around the tree, down the hole, over the hill, down by the prairie, back up the hole … What the heck are they talking about? Next thing I know, I’m tied up in a tree screaming for someone to cut me down. I’m a basket case.
Which is why days later I’m still not sure how well our first baby swimming class at the YMCA went, or whether I accomplished anything at all.
This I can tell you: I sure didn’t understand anything at all.
My wife signed up our family, including our little 6-month-old girl, for these very basic classes. No Olympic breast stroke for babies here. Mainly it’s how to handle your child in water, and for your child, how to handle being nearly drowned by your clumsy parents.
It was a lot of fun. We swam, we splashed, we didn’t drown and my baggy board shorts didn’t fall off, as is often known to happen, to the displeasure of mothers who then have to explain to their children why the skinny guy in the pool is screaming and naked.
But what did I learn? And did I do anything right that I was taught? The jury is not only out. It hung itself.
It really wasn’t that complicated, yet, there were times when it looked like I was practicing wrestling moves. The instructor would say to put my arm around Amelie with her cheek pressed close to mine, then hold both of her hands to make swimming motions. So I would make my best attempt, which would draw uncomfortable stares from other parents who wondered, “Why did he just put his child in a choke hold?”
It wasn’t that my kid was squirming. She was terrific, enjoying it all and incredibly calm. And I was calm, too, twisted up like a pretzel.
“So am I doing this right?” I said turning my head to ask the instructor during a “Superman” maneuver. Of course, the act of turning my head shifted my arm which in turn submerged my kid underwater.
Immediately realizing this, I brought her back up for air and was so proud to hear her first word: “Idiot!”
She might be right. The instructor then took my kid and handed her to my wife.
Still, it’s good to be out there learning about swimming, both for her and me. I remember my days learning to swim in the public pools of balmy Tampa. The water was always a chilly 185 degrees. Pool water got so hot in Tampa, you could boil lobster while swimming laps. If you weren’t poached in the first five minutes, they taught you things like “the dead man’s float,” which always seemed an odd name for something you teach children during water survival training.
“Next we’ll show you the ‘got shot and toppled into the pool breast stroke.’ Remember, it’s all about safety.”
I loved to swim as a kid, and I love the idea of my daughter getting used to the water now and really enjoying herself. And I know before the next class I will be working on my technique so I look less like Hulk Hogan teaching his kid how to underwater wrestle.