Home | Away

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Now boarding

As Elvis Costello says, “It creeps up on you without a warning, 45.” But that’s not really true.  I’ve known for a long time that I would turn 45 today.  And Janet got me my very own iPod, which, I believe, I can use to download eight-track tapes onto the U-tubes underneath the Internets!  At last—now I can finally show everyone how Three Dog Night expanded the frontiers of rock and paved the way for punk and No Wave!

But never mind about me today—let’s talk about Jamie.

The story of how Jamie learned to swim is a loooong story.  But we’ll tell the short version today, because we have a bunch of other things to do.  He started out as a little aquatic mammal who would jump into practically any body of water from the bathtub to the Arctic, but at some point during the summer of 1998, he must’ve had a Terrible Experience at summer day camp, because for the next year or two I could barely get him to go in the pool with me.  When he was eight and nine, his “swimming” experiences consisted of hanging onto my shoulder like a Rhesus monkey in water three feet deep.  It was very discouraging.  Before his Terrible Experience (the nature of which we never learned), he’d loved to play all kinds of fun games in the pool, like “he’s my guy,” which involved me singing, “he’s my guy and my guy and my guy and my guy and his name is Jamie B.,” tossing him up and down on each “my guy” and then hurling him backwards over my head and into about four or five feet of water on “B.” But during the dark years, there were no fun games.  Just a single unvarying exercise of “I clutch daddy.”

When we moved to central Pennsylvania I set about fixing this.  By the end of our first summer here, in 2001, I had gotten Jamie to the point at which he was willing to play by himself in shallow water—and just before the outdoor pool closed for the year, I persuaded him to hold onto me in the deep end for a few seconds.  He let go for a moment, tried to touch bottom, and cried, “is deep!  I would sink!” I assured him that he would not sink, he would float, but that we didn’t have to stay in the deep end any longer.  Over that winter, I joined a gym with an indoor pool, and since they allowed people to wear flotation devices in this pool, I fastened a flotation belt onto Jamie and let him get his confidence back bit by bit.

It took two years, but by the time he was twelve he was willing, once again, to jump into practically any body of water, no matter how deep.  Gradually, I weaned him from the flotation belt.  Sometimes the gradual process wasn’t gradual at all: once in early 2003, he was so taken with his newfound skills that he simply jumped right into the deep end by himself.  He immediately realized he was in way over his head, as the saying goes, and he paddled frantically back to the edge of the pool.  But it was a start.  That summer, he considered going off the diving board at Penn State’s outdoor pool, and actually considered it for about two full minutes while standing at the edge of the diving board (you can picture the scene, I’m sure)—before shuffling carefully back to dry land, jumping off the side of the deep end, and swimming half the length of the pool (a good 25 meters) before hauling himself out and announcing, “I am a brave and very good kid.” Which he was.  He was simply frightened of the board’s bounciness, because he likes to have a nice steady surface under his feet.

Since then he’s been an aquatic mammal again, and even he’s developed an idiosyncratic swimming stroke that serves him well.  His arms rarely break the plane of the water; instead, he thrusts them under his chest while frog-kicking.  It’s like watching a human try to imitate a sea lion, as I’ve told him many times.  (His response is usually to rotate and flip in the water like a sea lion.  He’s good at it.) He can move surprisingly fast this way, however ungainly it looks.  He can also stay afloat with ease, so he never worries any more about whether the water is deep.  And as he’s grown taller, he’s grown out of the shallow ends of the pools, to which he used to confine himself in his more timorous days.

All this would be quite satisfying enough, but over the past couple of weekends he’s had a couple more breakthroughs.  Now that September is here, Penn State’s outdoor pool is closed, and we’ve gone to the indoor pools of the Natatorium.  Five years ago he found these too intimidating: one is a 14-foot-deep diving pool, one is a six-to-ten-foot deep lap pool, and one is a three-to-five-foot deep lap pool.  In 2001-02 he could only manage the shallow end of the last of these.  Two weeks ago, by contrast, he jumped right into what I called (sneakily) the “big kids’ pool,” and proceeded—with minimal, but crucial, urging—to swim four laps back and forth.  We punctuated these with experiments in How to Touch the Bottom at both ends, and Jamie was thrilled to discover that when you’re five foot two, six feet of water isn’t very intimidating at all.

And then this Sunday we were playing around the sides of the diving pool alongside six or seven students.  I asked Jamie, for the hundredth time, if he wanted to go off the diving board, and for the hundredth time, he replied, “I don’t think so.” As I have on the previous 99 occasions, I said, “OK, then, just checking.” But this time I added, pointing to five lithe and rambunctious young men who were taking turns flying off the board, “you know, they’re not much older than you are, those guys.  They’re maybe 19 or 20, I think.” And that did it!  Before I knew what was up, Jamie was striding over to the board, muttering, “I will do it by myself.” I asked the lifeguard whether Jamie would be allowed to wear his goggles (the outdoor pools in State College forbid this), and he said, “sure—he’ll probably lose ‘em when he hits the water, but that’s OK if you can get ‘em.” And then splash! Without the slightest hesitation, Jamie had walked right to the end of the bouncy board and flung himself off.  He swam to the ladder, goggles still snugly on his face, where I met him with “nice jump!” and a big high five, and he—you knew this was coming, right?—announced that he would do it again.  And then again.  And then again. . . .

Welcome to the wonderful world of diving boards, Jamie.  We’re glad to have you.  It’s been well worth the wait.

Posted by Michael on 09/26 at 07:46 AM
Jamie • (42) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages