My brother is convinced I must have drowned in a past life.
Reason being that I never properly learned to swim and don’t care for having water splashed in my face.
The odd thing, though, is I have very clear memories of being at an aunt’s place in Winnipeg and diving into their backyard pool, and also sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shallow end with my cousin seeing who could stay under the longest, and I even remember swimming underwater in one of the local pools’ shallow ends. So somehow I used to be able to swim, albeit I never knew any specific swimming stroked, but somehow along the way I stopped going to the pool and forgot how.
A couple months ago, though, I decided it would be fun to work towards doing a triathlon, so that of course meant hitting the pool again. Lessons started this week and within the first half-hour session I’d remastered the front and back floats and started propelling myself in a half-assed way [not so much trying to swim, more steering as I drifted in my float positions to avoid whacking into the walls, the other swim lanes, or my fellow classmates.
And by the time this series of 10 beginners swim classes is done in early May, I should be able to start swimming lengths.
Still not crazy about ducking wholly under the water, but I did do some bobbing. And as I worked on my back float staring up at the vaulted wooden roof over the pool, I figure even if my brother is right—and I’m not 100% sold on past lives—then that was then and this is now.
It did give me an idea for this month’s maQLu’s New Moon Madness that I’ll be working on this weekend, though.
