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| A summer in the 80's at Crystal Pond in Eastford, CT |
I've always felt at total peace in the water. It creates a contagious state joy inside of me and as a child I really wished I could stay in the pool forever. As a teenager it always made me feel better and continues to do the same thing today as an adult. When the water hits my skin, that simple sensation, it washes away all the stress and the bad mojo that a day could possibly bring. My life truly needs to be connected to it, to be complete.
On March 24, 1974, I was introduced to my first pool by taking a tiny tots class with my mom. I'm not totally sure where it was, but it was in Yonkers. It could have been one of the Y's or Linden Street Pool (also know as Bath House No. 4) which has since been destroyed.
I spent a good portion of my childhood swimming. My mom would put me in summer swim lessons at Sprain Ridge Pool in Yonkers and in the fall I would swim at Ardsley Middle School (see video). My sister and I used to have so much fun at Sprain during the summer. There were two large pools at Sprain. One was more shallow and would hold 3 or 4 swim lessons at a time with a large wide water slide at the end of it. The other had a diving well with 3 diving boards. Two were standard and one was 15 feet high which was a right of passage to go off of. When you jumped off that board, it felt like you were falling forever. My mom would set up our camp at this pool and we would spend our time swimming between the two pools until about noon. Then my mother would say, "it's time to leave the rough element is coming in..." and home we went.
In August we would make our annual trip up to rural Eastford, CT where my mom was born and raised. We would stay in a rustic cabin with no drinkable water or shower for two weeks and have a blast. Jumping off the dock, staying in the water until your lips turned blue, swimming with your clothes on, canoe rides, blow up raft explorations, snorkeling and fishing occupied our days. There was no phone and the T.V. featured limited reception.
As you can see I was in the water a lot as a kid considering I wasn't on a swim team. And from the video you'll see that no one starts out swimming really well. It truly takes a ton time, training and hard work.
So during all this lesson taking, instructor's would recommend that I be put on a swim team. My mom would ask me, "Do you want to be on a swim team?" I would reply with a, "Why"? And she would say, with an unsure voice, "Because you can win ribbons". I would say, "I don't need ribbons. I don't think I want to join. I don't see the point."
I didn't understand what a swim team would really be about because I never participated in any team sports. Swimming competitively definitely isn't about just winning ribbons. In fact, swimming competitively is not always about winning. It's about learning how to lose and loose well. It's about testing yourself as a human-being physically, forging human relationships, working with team members, learning to be part of a team, and ultimately learning an incredible amount about yourself by discovering the potential of what you will be able to do for the rest of your future life.
I wish I had understood this and if I could travel back in time, this point would definitely be one of my stop offs. I would say, "Listen, you have a great opportunity here. Join a team and find out what you can do. Don't be scared. Trust me it will be worth it. And whatever happens do not leave no matter what. Fight to stay, you won't regret it." If I had started when I was 5 on a competitive team and continued through to college, I would have loved to have seen what could have been possible.
But I was a different kid.
I never fit in. Public School became highly unpleasant for me after kindergarten (kindergarten was private). I was the kind of kid that went to museums, listened to classic music and had never heard of Elvis, had nothing to do with sports, created Indian huts, played in the woods, fished, hunted unicorns, shot bows and arrows, believed in nature as your god and that magic did exist, had conversations with my stuffed animals and convinced teachers that I thought they came to life at night (my mother was called in on that one), dressed up in costumes, painted, sculpted, put on shows. drew and was totally taken in by anything fantastical and was really barely social. Mostly because few understood my "world" and were I was coming from. My demeanor came off as aloof and was misinterpreted. I was terribly shy and introverted. This was partially due to the fact that I approached kids with a more adult mindset and was also teased unmercifully.
Because of this, anytime a social offering was presented before me, I totally avoided it. My mom tried to send me to camp but I was obstinate against that idea. I would tell her, "Sorry, I have projects to work on and I have no desire to make friends. I don't need friends." It's not that I didn't want to make friends truthfully it's that I didn't want to deal with the inevitable name calling and viciousness that I experienced all through grade school. I tend to be a sensitive soul and unfortunately school was not enjoyable for me as a whole. There were maybe 2-3 years of high school that were slightly better... well you get it.... school was never my thing.
As you can see, being on a competitive team and socializing didn't appeal to me in the slightest. At this time I never would have imagined I would have become a competitive swimmer in the future. It's really amazing the amount of changes I went though regarding this and how this was actually my mindset at one time in the past...
When given the right opportunity, with the right people... things can change.
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| Canoeing at Crystal Pond in Eastford, CT... 1980's |
