Puff the Magic Dragon Goes Swimming

Last night was fencing night. That was fun. I like having someone else push me to exercise more. Still haven't bouted and I'm okay with that. Drills are stressful enough, for right now. We'll build up to more later.

After class finished, I drove my way home through the glorious thunderstorm. The thunder was muted, but the lightning was non-stop and the rain came down in sheets that were terrifying for some moments and non-existent for others. Unpredictable, yet beautiful.

As I drove, I started to think about the different exercise-based fears that I have and how I'm working to conquer them. For example, I can swim ten laps of the pool, but only on my back. Exactly where the fear of putting my face in the water came from, I don't know, but by the time I reached 4th grade, it was less about fear than it was about dominance. My mom wanted me to learn how to swim and swimming wasn't my idea. Much of my schooling had that tension built into it, but swimming... well...

Some of the instructors were bullies about it. "You will do this, because I told you so, and if you don't swim during the lessons, you don't get to swim during free time." That was the camp swim instructor, actually, and that week of camp was about as close to hell as a gal can get.

That week, I went to camp without a friend, because I didn't have friends, because we attended a church without any other girls my age. There was a boy my age though... he nicknamed me "Puff the Magic Dragon" so that I would never forget that my hair didn't look the way people thought it should. Somehow or other, he got put in my camp group. And he wasn't even the worst!

There was another camper there, I don't remember his name and I never saw him again later, but he was mean to everyone. He called our counselor "Anna Banana," absolutely loved my unwanted nickname, made up parodies of commercials to make the other campers laugh at the instructors, yelled all the time, and never obeyed anyone. There was nothing I could do about any of it. No amount of brushing my hair would make it lay flat. I couldn't escape the teasing, and I was miserable.

And, on top of the endless torment, there was swim class with the bully instructor that nobody liked. By Thursday, I couldn't take it any more and I point-blank refused to put my face in the water. It was a cold and nasty morning anyway, and I didn't want to be in the pool at all. When yelling at me didn't make me fall in line, she told me she was taking away my free swim time. For every minute I refused to take my lesson, I'd lose a minute of afternoon free swim.

I told her to go to hell.

Well, not literally. I couldn't have used the word "hell" then. But I definitely turned up my nose and told her I didn't care.

As it turned out, the afternoon was hot and muggy and one didn't want to be on the bench when everyone else was having fun. The best part, though, is that the big bully had lost ten minutes of free swim for his misbehavior and it was absolutely killing him to know that I'd gotten fifteen to his mere ten. So, what happened is that we spent ten minutes with him doing everything in his power to coax me to tell him what I'd done to deserve it. And I spent ten minutes laughing at his desperation.

When he was finally released to go swim, I spent the next five minutes glowing with pride in the power my punishment gave me to annoy him back. Friday was a far more pleasant day than the rest of the week had been.

Which just goes to show you how little adults know about what's going on among their young charges. Those fifteen minutes under the hot sun were the best fun I'd never want to have again. Gave me a sort of street cred, so I could manage my own differences with a guy the big folk weren't stopping.

Later, I became a counselor at that same camp and found out that taking away swim time had become a banned punishment, seen at the same level as taking away snacks or drink. "The kids need their swim time, because it gets too hot here in the afternoon. We don't want to send anyone home with heat stroke." Yeah, that's probably a good change. By then, that swim instructor had left, hopefully to a place where she doesn't get to work with kids, since she obviously didn't see that as a privilege.

Anyway, just as I'm drilling to build up the habits and skills I need to bout for real in fencing, I'm also trying to become more comfortable with the pool. As I swim laps, I let the water lap at my eyes without wiping it away. Afterwards, I go to the shallow area, and let myself float face down, with my hands and knees on the pool floor for reassurance. I know my trouble with swimming is mental, because I could swim beautifully when my instructors found the right humiliation to motivate me.

All I need now is to find the kind of motivation that doesn't rely on fear.