I. Swimming

Recently, I've been trying to teach myself how to swim. I never really learned how and swimming is supposed to be easy on your joints, so I'm trying to learn for exercise purposes. I don't want to pay for lessons though, so I've been watching tutorials on YouTube.

Here's my favorite swimmer.

Shinji is actually the number one rated YouTube swimmer. On YouTube. It says so on his site, Swim Like Shinji.

I haven't been able to swim like Shinji yet, but I've been making progress. I think.

The first day I kinda just doggy paddled and splashed around while a creepy old guy watched me. Then, when I got into the hot tub to relax, he followed me in and just kept staring without saying a word. That was a week ago.

Yesterday, I managed to do sixteen laps. It took nearly forty-five minutes, but I did sixteen laps, guys.

I think my kick and stroke are ok. It's the breathing part that I struggle with. I either keep forgetting to exhale or I don't rotate my body enough so that when I try to breathe, I get a mouthful of pool water which freaks me out so I have to grab onto the pool lane buoys to gather my bearings.

There have been short periods where I get the hang of it. My body is horizontal and I rotate enough and I emerge from the water just long enough to get a decent breath before I go back in. But then I either hit the wall or a buoy or a sixty-five year old woman doing water aerobics (that's only happened twice) and I lose my groove and have to compose myself.

But I can tell I've been getting better.

I'm coming for you, Shinji.

A couple weeks ago, my family and I went to California to celebrate Kayla's 11th birthday. Los Angeles, to be precise. LA, to be concise. Another rhyme is 'spanish rice.'

We took an early flight from IAH and flew into LAX at 9AM. The rest of the day was spent at Universal Studios. We stood in some lines, rode some rides, and ate some churros. We also played a few carnival games. With four tries, Kayla won two jumbo prizes at the whiffle ball game where you try to get a whiffle ball into one of the colored spots.

When we got back to the hotel, Kayla and I changed into our swim clothes and sauntered on down to the pool. The rest of my family went to bed because they're smart, sensible people that understand the fact that people gotta sleep. Kayla and I understand that the pool is always the most exciting part of any hotel. Unfortunately, the pool was filled with dozens of children, their chatter filling the air like a cavern of bats filled with sonar. There was hardly any space to tread water, much less swim. A few adults sat on lounge chairs, looking dejected and reconsidering their life choices. Everyone has regrets. Some more than others.

Kayla jumped right on in. I took the stairs.

I know it's better to just jump into a pool to get over the initial shock of cold water, but I like taking it little by little. First I get my feet wet, then my calves, then my thighs. When I'm waist deep, I wet my hands and rub some cold water on my chest, pretending I'm a sexy cover girl rubbing cocoa butter lotion on my body. Just to get a feel for things. After a few seconds, I slowly dunk my head into the pool. I like taking things slow. It puts me at ease.

I didn't need to do that in this pool. The water was much too warm. Uncomfortably so. And with that many kids in the pool, you know why.

We stood in the shallow end for a few minutes, staring at the aquatic chaos unfolding in front of us. A bunch of foreign children were splashing water at each other. A toddler floating in an inner tube was slowly spinning in circles, aimlessly floating from one end to the other. One kid was bobbing, then stopped bobbing for a few seconds, then resumed bobbing, raising the temperature of the pool a couple degrees.

After a few minutes, Kayla and I moved to the hot tub which was actually cooler than the pool. The hot tub was packed as well, but not as tightly. We settled next to the handrail, the bubbles forming frantic figure-eights in the center of the tub.

"Do you know how to swim?" Kayla asked me.

"Uh… Kinda." I told her. "I mean, I can doggy-paddle, but I can't really swim swim."

"Oh," she said, disappointed.

I closed my eyes and let the hot water jets massage my back.

"I've been watching swim videos on YouTube," she admitted.

"Like tutorials?"

"Yeah."

Kayla is definitely my sister.

"I'm trying to learn how to go underwater without holding my nose. But I can't do it right." she told me.

"Hmm."

I briefly considered trying to teach my sister how to do that, but, sanitation wise, the hot tub wasn't much better than the pool. I definitely saw some bubbles come out from the fat guy in the corner and dude was not sitting next to one of the jets.

"You should get lessons," I said. "They're helpful. And the teachers are usually nice."

Kayla nodded slowly, as if I had just relayed an old proverb to her. Might makes right or A penny saved is a penny earned or Never eat sushi from a Mexican buffet.

"Did you ever take swim lessons?" she asked.

I had, actually. I had taken swim lessons back in the 2nd grade. My mom had signed my sister, Kimberly, and me up for beginner swim classes at the local YMCA. I took to swimming like a Phish takes to extended musical improvisational jams. The both of us passed the beginner class (which consisted of wearing floaties and flapping around in the water) and moved on to the beginner/intermediate class. The only problem was there was only one open spot in the beginner/intermediate class.

There WAS, however, an open spot in the intermediate/advanced classes, which was three spots removed from beginner/intermediate. Since Kimberly was younger, she moved onto the beginner/intermediate class. I was placed in intermediate/advanced.

The intermediate/advanced class was held in the adult pool which had a shallow end that was deeper than I was tall. I didn't know that at the time. I was in a class with eleven other kids, all of which were going on to the 5th grade. The teacher sized me up, shrugged and then blew her whistle.

"Alright, y'all. Remember the kick-stroke-breathe technique from your intermediate/intermediate class?"

All the 5th graders nodded. I shook my head.

"I want you to jump into the shallow end and start practicing."

The 5th graders jumped into the pool and immediately started swimming around in short spurts, like tadpoles in a freshwater pond.

"Come on. You too." the teacher said, nudging her finger into my back.

I walked up to the edge of the pool and looked down. It didn't look that deep and I had done ok in the beginner class. Besides, if anything bad happened, the teacher was there to rescue me. I plugged my nose with my right thumb and index finger, closed my eyes and jumped in.

The cold water enveloped me. I sunk. Down, down, down. Like a submarine. After a few seconds of submerging, I realized I hadn't touched the floor of the pool yet and panicked. I tried to breathe and gulped down a mouthful of pool water. Immediately, I started flailing my appendages.

I surfaced for a split second, gasped in a bit of air and then immediately swallowed another mouthful of pool water. Then I went back under. I kicked and flapped, splashing about in an effort to stay afloat and keep my head above water. Eventually, my hand smacked into a pool lane buoy and I wrapped myself around it like a boa constrictor around a tapir. I bobbed up and down, furiously breathing in mouthfuls of air.

"HEY. Let go of the buoys and swim," instructed the teacher.

I shook my head and held on. She hadn't seen me nearly drown because she had been preoccupied with the other eleven children.

"Let. Go." she repeated.

Again, I shook my head.

"Ok. I'm coming in."

She hopped into the pool, waded over to where I was and began prying me off the buoys.

"Ah. AH. AHHHH!" I shouted.

Once she had loosened my grip from the buoys, I clamped onto her shoulders and dug my nails into her skin, drawing blood.

"AHHHH!" she shouted.

That was my first and last intermediate/advanced swim class.

I didn't tell any of this to Kayla.

"Yeah," I said to her. "I took classes, but I didn't do it long enough to learn how to swim properly."

"Oh," she said. After a few more minutes, we left the hot tub and went back up the room.

I know I'm getting better. The more you do something, the better you get at it. I just gotta keep swimming. And then maybe, just maybe, I can be the number one rated YouTube swimmer on YouTube.

Just like Shinji.