In the swim!

Ever since I was a little boy, I've loved the water. I remember seeing a photo of me as a five-year old in Giessen-Wieseck, Germany dressed in my swimming trunks and beaming with joy at the prospect of going swimming. When I was eleven or twelve years old, I began taking swimming lessons at a YMCA in Cincinnati, Ohio. There were three instructional levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. I managed to pass all three. I learned to do the crawl, the breast stroke, the back stroke and the side stroke. The only one I never mastered was the butterfly. I don't remember them teaching that at the time.

I was able to use my swimming skills soon after that when my dad and I took a trip to Coney

Island, New York. There, my dad took a picture of me cavorting in the ocean waves. I was right in my element -- a skinny little boy enjoying every minute of it! When I got to high school at St. Xavier, I tried to join their swim team. But, even though I'd mastered all the strokes, I was too slow to make the team. However, that didn't stop me from swimming whenever the opportunity presented itself. One of my favorite memories of growing up was the time I spent swimming in the backyard pool of my dad's German family friends Arnold and Hannelore. I loved diving into their pool, especially when I did cannonballs and back flips.

There were only two bad experiences I had related to swimming. One of these occurred when I was twelve years old. I had just returned to live with my dad after being in three different foster homes. Because he was concerned that I wasn't getting enough exercise, and was spending too much time by myself, he pushed me to go swimming every Saturday morning at a Y-like facility in Cincinnati called The Friar's Club. I remember that the pool was only open to boys at that time, and that I had to swim in the nude. If that wasn't bad enough, I was constantly taunted by some of the other boys in the locker room because I was so skinny and timid. They often hit me in the rear end with their wettened towels. I was always scared to go there, but my dad insisted.

Some of my peak experiences involving swimming were my annual visits to Virginia Beach to visit my grad school friends Pat and Don. There, I always looked forward to swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. I could never get enough of body surfing in the waves or walking in my bare feet along the sandy beach.

In 1986, I began volunteering at the Blaisdell YMCA as a swim aide by helping the instructors teach swimming to pre-school kids. That way, I was able to get a free membership, and swim in the pool whenever I wanted. I would never have taken this job to begin with since I had little experience working with kids, and I was afraid of taking charge. But the aquatics director Sandy saw something in me that I failed to see in myself. She encouraged me to work with the kids. I did that job for some fifteen years. Eventually, I got confident enough to teach some of the classes by myself, as well as work with the older kids.

Eventually, in 1998, I got certified as a lifeguard at the Blaisdell Y. After passing a battery of rigorous tests at a North Minneapolis Y, I began working at the Blaisdell Y for some three years. Not only did I feel a deep sense of pride in this accomplishment, but I also got paid. I vividly remember one of the rescue skills I had to demonstrate in order to get certified. It involved diving into the deep end of the pool with my rescue tube to bring up a two-hundred-pound- plus man from the bottom to the surface, then escort him safely to the side of the pool. I remember how scared I was of running out of breath before I got the guy up to the surface. But I managed to accomplish this feat with flying colors, and no worse for wear.

Unfortunately, I had my second bad swim experience around this time when I got fired from my lifeguarding position by the new aquatics director, Andrea. I still remember some of the swim teachers referring to her as the pool Nazi. I made the mistake of telling her that I suffered from recurring episodes of depression. I think she used that against me even though I couldn't prove it. In any case, I had to take her lifeguarding class in order to get re-certified. But when I wasn't able to do one of the required skills to her satisfaction, I was fired from my life guarding job. Not only that, but I also lost my job as a kids' swim instructor. As a result, I could no longer get a free Y membership. This whole experience left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I didn't go back to the Blaisdell Y for quite a few years.

However, my time as a lifeguard wasn't all negative. Far from it, most of the time I did quite well. I gained a lot of confidence not only in my swimming skills, but also in supervising various kids' activities. I remember blowing the whistle a lot during kids' open swims. At those times, the pool was often filled with more than a hundred kids while four lifeguards took up their positions on four corners of the pool.

One of my most memorable lifeguarding experiences occurred when I rescued a ten-year old girl from drowning. She jumped off the diving board into the deep end, only to discover that she couldn't swim. So, I quickly jumped into the water with my bright red rescue tube in hand, and brought her safely to the side of the pool. But that wasn't the end of it! The girl, unaware of the danger she'd just been in, wanted to jump right back in the water! I've been going back the the Blaisdell Y pool for some fifteen years now. My current routine is to do a half an hour of lap swimming on Monday and Friday mornings, followed by fifteen minutes in the whirlpool.