I Think I Can, I Think I Can...Swim?

"I just...."

"C'mon, go for it!"

"I don't know yet."

"Here let me show you, it's really easy."

"Wait a second!"

"No, we'll do it together! You'll love it!"

"Hang on! I'm not sure!"

"You don't have to be! Just try it!"

"Just hold on! I'm thinking first!"

"There's not much to think of - let's GGG-"

"WAIT!

"GGggggoOOOOOOOOO!"

"OK STOP IT, I CAN'T! I WON'T DO THIS. I HATE THIS! DO NOT BOTHER ME ANYMORE ABOUT THIS. FOREVER!"

"Wow, OK, geez. You could've just said something...."

"....."

That is my reaction whenever I have to experience anything at a pace that is not my own.

If you looked at the definition of the word "caution" you'll notice an addenum from 1987: it's me. If you are trying to find a synonym for "meticulous" please just use my name in your next college paper.

"Additional evidence that something was amiss comes from Meinertzhagen's usually meticulous  Shasta diaries."

I tend to look at new experiences like problems (because to me, they typically are problems) and I want to understand the step-by-step solution before I get to the answer. I like to sense something out first, then retreat into my brain, then maybe send out a feeler one more time, then retreat again, and then finally, maybe, possibly, I'll try it.

Maybe.

Sometimes my caution is overly cumbersome for other people, but there are a lot of other people out there in the world and only one Shasta Lewis. I am cautious because SURVIVAL, HELLO? I'll admit that I take it to an extreme at times, but it helps me feel confident when I do finally decide to try something new because I will research the living hell out of it beforehand.

Like, it cannot be dangerous or questionable in any way anymore because I killed it. It is dead now. I literally bored it to death.

I bring all of this up because I've started training for a triathlon and swimming is the current experience that I am trying to wrap my mind around first because that is how I do all.the.things.

For whatever reason, my parents didn't enroll me in swimming lessons as a kid. To some parents, this is, like, anathema to good parenting. Whatever. So is letting your untrained kids have unrestricted access to loaded, unfamiliar guns, but parents seem to do that all of the time in this country!

Anyway.

My parents literally forgot that I didn't know how to swim because we partook in water activities as a family all never times. My mom couldn't swim because she grew up in the Philippines and despite being surrounded by an ocean, swimming is not a recreational activity for the youth there.

In fact, I think she believed that the water was haunted.

My dad just straight up did not and still does not enjoy swimming. Please move aside, Pools, my dad had some sophisticated software to go program instead.

So, I just never learned how to swim.

I wish this wasn't such a big deal to me, but I spent a lot of spring breaks, summer vacations, and birthday pool parties in a cumbersome life vest within shallow waters. You would think that people in the Pacific Northwest wouldn't be so inclined to swim because of the rain and the gray and the cold and it's not suburban California, but every hippy up here seems to swim on the reg.

There were, like, 17 swimming pools within a two-mile radius of my childhood home, and I almost died in all of them felt like I died in all of them.

Like every person's adolescence, this has been a constant, painful memory for me because I was literally good at everything BESIDES swimming. I would look longingly across a pool and see my friends play horse even though NONE OF THEM were taking advanced calculus with me.

None of them could outrun me on the track!

None of them earned a frequent reader card from our local library!

THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL!

I also made the mistake of having mermaids for best friends because they were all life guards or on swim teams or went boating regularly.

It was seriously ridiculous. Didn't you people like being on land? Did we seriously have to go to the beach every weekend? Why couldn't we just sit around and read books, ugh?

So, couple a lifetime aversion to anything potentially dangerous with an inability to swim, and you basically have the Worst Swimmer in the World: Her Name is Shasta.

Another incredible irony is that I married a man who happens to be a record-holding competitive swimmer.

I mean, really? It's like some cosmic force or spiritual deity is trying to show me that water is going to be a part of my life in a big, big way forever.

Now, imagine me in a pool flailing around like an idiot because none of my swimming research has paid off in there. My husband has been diligently providing me with swim lessons that include an exhausting list of instructions because his wife cannot comprehend anything without all 4,502,796 steps explained in complete detail. That is what is happening on regular basis, day in and day out. We are both very tired.

OK, I'm actually the very tired one. I'm pretty sure Andy is mostly amused because seriously? This overly cautious 27-year-old woman, who reads books about swimming, is going to try to swim now?

Get the man some popcorn, this is quality entertainment, people!

I will not jump into the water. I will not move onto Step 9 without first mastering Steps 1-8. I have been learning at my own pace, and while I'm fairly certain that newborn kittens could lap me within 50 meters, I have been improving.

Step 1: I can float.

Step 2: My arms and legs work.

Step 3: I exhale through my nose. (This took two lessons, by the by.)

And so on and so forth.

What is amazing to me is that swimming, like real swimming as opposed to the intense doggy paddling that I am actually quite exceptional at, is wonderfully technical. In spite of the mouthful of water I seem to choke on every 5 minutes, I am enjoying myself because swimming involves way more cerebral activity than I had remembered from my childhood.

Some day soon, like really soon because I already paid for my registration fee, I will be propelling myself across the water without any reservations because the entire triathlon sport will be so bored of me that it won't matter if I'm the last in my swimming heat anymore.

The event coordinators will see me pass that final buoy and remark, "Oh, it's that crazy lady who found a loophole in our registration policies and managed to ensure that we had to let her finish because the time constraints in this race are arbitrary and un-enforceable."

And they said you couldn't take the fun out of everything?

"They" obviously didn't know me.