Swimming Lessons from a Bully

Swimming Lessons
From A Bully

YMCA

Ardmore, PA 

Summer, 1964

I didn’t want to go to camp.  But my older brother and sister went last summer. So my parents thought it would be a good experience for me, as well.  Kathy hated it and Jimmy loved it. It was a YMCA camp in Ardmore and we spent most of the day outside, in the heat, running around.  So no wonder Kathy hated it and I just knew that I was going to hate it too.  I liked to play inside, quietly with my dolls and friends.

So when my parents told me that they had signed me up for a six week program, I felt sorry for myself. My summer was to be a summer where I had been sentenced to six weeks of hard exercise and, in the heat, in the suburbs.

One the eve of my sentence, I had dinner with my grandfather.  He spent much of our conversation talking about why I was going to love camp.  It was going to teach me so much. I was going to get to run around and play games.  I was going to meet new people and I was going to learn to swim.  Now I didn’t know why I had to learn to swim because we lived in the city and no one had a swimming pool. Quite frankly, this skill probably would be as useless as teaching me how to drive a farm tracker (another skill I wouldn’t be using).

But then, just as he is telling me that swimming was a lifelong skill and everyone should learn to swim, he tells me a story about his brother, a well-trained swimmer, almost an Olympic swimmer, who dove off a board, somehow hits his head and died.  At the age of 24. End of story.  Well, why would anyone want to learn to swim after hearing that story?  Then Jack tells me that the moral of the story is to be careful no matter how trained, how skilled, how strong you are.  Water is more powerful.

So now I go off to camp not only with a dread of the outdoors but now with my new found fear of the water.

We start the day on a football field that is hard, dusty and buggy.  There are no restrooms, only port-a-potties which my mother has trained me not to use because they transport all sorts of deadly, deadly diseases.

We have lunch which my mother packed.  My lunch is peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread and an apple.  This is the only lunch my mother ever packs for me.  And I don’t like peanut butter and jelly and wheat bread.  An apple is fine but it really isn’t satisfying if you are truly hungry.  The kid next to me is eating a large hoagie, potato chips, tasty kakes and chocolate milk.  He doesn’t offer to share any of his food with me. Since I am not eating my sandwich, I am left with time on my hands to count my mosquito bites.  I have 12 bits just from this morning.

After lunch, we clean up and walk to the pool across the street. I feel as if I am walking to my death.  I am on my way to drown.

We get the locker room and the girls who go to public school are very comfortable with stripping down naked and putting on their bathing suits.  I go to catholic school.  We don’t strip down naked, ever.  So I don’t know what to do. I decide to take my suit and change in the stall.  This will give me the privacy I need and then I will be close to the toilet as I throw up from anxiety about my pending drowning from falling off the diving board and hitting my head.

I sit in that stall and contemplate my fate.  I am in a panic and I think about running away but somehow I muster up my courage and put my suit on and come out of the stall.  I look around and see that the locker room is now empty.  Everyone has left me.  I don’t know where to go.  I try a few doors but they don’t lead to the pool.

 So I just sit and wait until everyone comes back and then I change back in to my clothes. As I put my bathing suit away, I rinse it under the facet to make it wet.  That way, there will be no suspicion on my mother’s part when I unpack everything at home.

At dinner, my brother gives a glowing review of the day at camp.  My father asked me how it went. “It’s alright” is all I answer. 

“How did you like swimming?” he wants to know.

 “It’s alright", is all I answer.

Then my brother chimes in, “Hey, I didn’t see you at the pool.”

“I was there.”  I answer defensively. The conversation changes and I am spared any more need to continue to lie.

The next day, we follow the same routine and I execute the same survival plan. And I am beginning to think that I may not die after all.

It is now the third day and some little snot-nosed girl asked me why I wouldn’t go to the pool.  I pretend that she isn’t speaking to me and I don’t answer her.  I just take my suit and run to my stall.

When it is safe to come out, I sit on my usual bench and wait patiently. As random thoughts are dancing through my head, a big wooden door opens up and a large woman in a bathing suit comes in.  A pungent whiff of chlorine fills the room.

“You!!” she barks at me.  “What are you doing in here?  You aren’t supposed to be here.” She speaks to me in a tone you would use on a street thug, not an 8 year old girl.  And immediately, I become afraid of her. “Get out there,” she demands, pointing to the pool.

She holds the door open for me and I scurry under her arm, placing my foot on the wet, slippery tiles floor and I slide away from her. She blows her whistle and call to the man who appears to be in change.  ”Hey coach, I found her.  Is this the kid who’s been missing?  She was just sitting in the locker room."

 Mr. Potts comes over to me.  He’s a big, burly guy with lots of hair on his chest, a whistle around his neck, and red bathing trucks that might have fit him ten years ago but not today.

“Where have you been” he demands to know. 

“In the locker room” I say timidly.

"Doing what"?  Why weren’t you out here?”

“I couldn’t find the pool”, I tell him.

That brings an uproar of laughter and mockery.  And I see the snot-nosed girl out of the corner of my eye.  She is delighted with the results of her tattle tale actions.

“Well, you found the pool now, so jump in”, says Mr. Potts.

“I am afraid.” I tell him.

“Afraid! Afraid!!” he repeats loudly so that everyone can now hear him.  “Afraid of what?” he asks curtly.

“Of getting my face wet” I meekly reply.

“Well, we’ll take care of that” he says with confidence.

I feel a moment of relief.  But that is short lived because he picks me up and drops me right in the water.  I feel myself sinking to the bottom. I am sinking in slow motion. I am frightened beyond belief.  This is my moment of death.  But then I just pop right back up and my head peeks up and I try to orient myself so that I can climb right out of the pool.  I quickly wipe my eyes and look around.  But then I feel the force of Mr. Potts large hand on my head.

“Here, this will help you get over your fear of the water.”  His tone is mocking.

 And he bobs my head up and down in the water.  He took me by surprise so I didn’t have time to catch my breath.  So now I am under water and I can’t get away from his grip.  I don’t know how long he kept me under there.  It seemed like days.  But he finally lets go of me and moves away from me.  And I am left alone.  I made my way to the side of the pool.  I just clung on to the ladder, stunned, trembling and gasping for air.  I had survived.  I was not dead. But I was now damaged goods.  I never got over my fear of the water.  I never learned to swim.