I used to go to the lake when I was a kid. I’ve also enjoyed snorkeling a few times, and was able to scuba dive once in Hawaii. Not too shabby for a guy who can’t swim. Bridget always made fun of me for this, but I didn’t mind too much. Life jacket technology these days is outstanding…. errr… well it’s allowed me to do a lot.

So as a gift for our anniversary, Bridget bought us both swimming lessons at the Sorensons Community Center. (I initially got excited because I thought she said Swensons… and I was going to swim in an ice cream sundae.)

Bridget  is not a strong swimmer either. In fact, if there was an emergency, and Bridget had to swim to shore, she’d have a better chance of swimming a circle around the boat instead of a straight line to land.

Either way, we both attended. I had fears of what these classes were going to be. I didn’t want the class to start with the swimming instructor holding me in the water like a large basket, telling me to kick my legs.

Well the first class  had two other people that signed up.  Our instructor gave us the drink from the fire hose approach. In the hour we spent, we learned freestyle, backstroke, and breast stroke. We learned the kicks and arm techniques.

A week later, we had our second class. There was two new people, and another person who returned from the previous class. We later learned she took the class four times already.  We had a new instructor this round, and he took a slower approach, so while the review was good, it did feel we took a few strokes back.

In the next lesson, only Bridget and I showed up to the class. We fine tuned some of our strokes and learned how to do a kick flip. As I was leaving,  I finally heard another instructor say to his class of high schoolers :
“Who wants to swim like a mermaid?”
Everyone had a blank stare.
“Okay… then who wants to swim like a merman… Do you want to swim like a merman?” They shared the blank stare this time.
I left with a smirk on my face.

The final lesson, after an instructor finally showed up, included some water treading and the butterfly stroke with a completely new instructor. But the lessons we’re finished. And now, Michael Phelps, you better watch out. The 2012 gold is mine!