Thoughts are hard

Which is why I began two blogposts since the last one and scrapped them midway through. But I'm feeling the need to write something. So I'm cheating and using a modified prompt from One Minute Writer. The prompt is to write about a memorable summer activity you enjoyed as a child, but I decided to reminisce about a summer activity that I did not enjoy. I know, I'm so subversive sometimes.

My mom had a loosely-enforced summertime rule regarding the wearing of innertubes, swimmies, and the like in the pool: You have to wear them until you pass swim lessons. I say "loosely-enforced" because, like most of her rules, I could generally whine and wheedle my way out of them (don't judge my mom. You don't know the piercing hell that was/is my tantrum voice). However, it would seem a rule such as this--one designed for safety--wouldn't be up for compromise. But, dear reader, let me tell you: Had she actually enforced it, I would have been wearing my red rubber innertube-swimsuit until I moved out of the house. I never learned to swim.

It's not that I'm afraid of water. On the contrary, I always look forward to pool excursions. It's that I am supremely unathletic. My body simply refuses to move the way it should. Water gets up my nose, no matter how hard I try to blow out underwater. Diving inevitably ends in bellyflops. A simple freestyle stroke turns to a doggie paddle, and a float always ends in a sink. As recently as last summer friends tried to get me to execute a successful float on my back. I was relaxed, head back, arms out, and my legs still refused to remain horizontal. I'm very dense, you see. I can't tread water in the same way that other people can, either. The only way I can stay afloat in one place is by kicking as fast as I can like I'm riding a unicycle, while simulataneously sweeping my arms. If I try to do it slowly, the sea eats me.

Oh, and I still hold my nose when I go underwater. GOD HELP YOU if you dunk me before I have a chance to pinch my nostrils shut.

I can't recall the order in which I was signed up for swim lessons, but I do recall at least three separate summers in which my mom attempted to instill aquatic knowledge in my young mind. There was Mr. Doug, a large hairy man with a bushy mustache. I believe his swim lessons were in his home pool, but I could be wrong. We have a home movie of this debacle. I'm blissfully doggie paddling along in arm swimmies, a giant styrofoam q-tip under my armpits for extra support. I laugh and splash, and make silly jokes with Mr. Doug. Then Mr. Doug takes away my q-tip, THAT MONSTER. I flail and cry, my head dipping underwater and begging for mercy. After a good ten minutes of watching me sputter and die, Mr. Doug finally gives up and deposits me, still clinging to his hairy chest, on the side of the pool. There I curl up into an angry ball, betrayed.

I don't remember the second swim lessons at all, except that a pretty blonde lady (maybe a teen, who knows) taught it. Also, a failure, because that led to the final swim lesson at a local country club. I think I was about 8 or 9 by that time, and had to be placed with some younger kids. That probably didn't encourage me to take the lessons very seriously, and I recall mostly splashing around and ignoring the instructor. One day we had a CPR lesson, and instead of getting to be in the pool we had to sit on the side and watch demonstration after demonstration. I remember being hot, and thinking I can go into the water if I make it look like an accident. So I slipped off the side into the deep end and let myself sink to the bottom. Then, I kicked my way back up to the top, expecting the instructor to yell at me. Instead, she praised me for knowing how to get back up, and I was pleased that my deception was successful. THAT is what I learned from those lessons.

I'm pretty sure that because I disliked swim lessons so much as a child, and was so awful to my instructors, it's my cosmic fate that someday I'll be the sole survivor of a plane crash only to land in the middle of a small, relatively shallow lake/river/pond/swimmin' hole, and that I will drown right then and there with onlookers lamenting "if only she learned to swim." Or that one day I will have a child that I take to the beach, and he will get caught in a rip tide, and I will only be able to shout helplessly from the beach, "I'M SORRY JOHNNY. MOMMY HAS TO HOLD HER NOSE IN THE WATER AND SHE CAN'T REACH YOU WITH ONLY ONE ARM, NOW CAN SHE?"

Even worse: My mother will show up one day and demand I wear my swimmies again. She would.

This infant is actually rescuing me.

But lifting the beer can to my lips IS exercise

About a month ago Boyfriend had a perfect storm of optimism and self-loathing that culminated in a gym membership. He only bought one membership, but it has an unlimited guest pass that is intended for me. I've gone a whopping three times, finding each excursion both physically and mentally painful. Ten minutes ago, Boyfriend left for the gym without me. I'm pretty sure that I won't be coaxed into joining him anytime soon.

I've never liked exercise of any kind. As my sister so kindly pointed out, I spend a lot of time harping on the importance of exercise and physical movement for women and girls, but no time practicing this advice in my personal life. I'll clarify: What I believe in is the opportunity for women and girls to be as physically active as men and boys; what I don't believe in is that I, personally, must drag my cottage-cheese ass on an elliptical as I cry on the inside. I never derived any pleasure from sports or exercise as others seemed to. At 5, I spent every single pee-wee soccer practice crying on the sidelines and begging to go home; At 7, I quit tennis camp after a little boy schooled me on the court and then teased me for it; At 11, I prematurely left basketball camp when I realized that none of the other girls would talk to me; At 13, I came in last at the first cross-country running practice and never returned; At 15, I almost got into fisticuffs with a much larger girl at softball and decided that softball wasn't for me.

What DID love was horseback riding. At 17, I had to quit my lessons so I could keep working my crappy job and earn money for the move to college. I haven't been on horseback since, nor have I found a suitable replacement.

I think the fact that I was gangly and naturally uncoordinated had much to do with my hatred of sports; coupled with the fact that my parents didn't really place any sort of emphasis on them and cared more about my schoolwork. Also, it seemed like every other kid who was into sports wasn't into me...I was weird or a goody-two-shoes or talked too much or cracked jokes that no one understood. The sports kids were not my kind. My kind liked to run and climb, but not in any sort of organized fashion. My kind liked to talk on the sidelines at gym class; not because we feared sweat or messing up our hair but because we just wanted a time-out from all the work and competition.

I refuse to feel guilt over this. This is how I am. I'm not overweight and I don't have bad cholesterol and I only get winded from walking stairs sometimes. Until those things change, I refuse to waste minutes of my precious life wishing for swift death on a treadmill.

Anyways, I'm 22. I can do what I want. I'm making a blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight and nyah nyah nyah nyah.