I miscalculated.
I miscalculated the depth of the water at the spot I stopped swimming.
Easing off from the deep end of Ken’s pool, I swam on one breadth toward the shallow end, having not yet learned to breathe in the water while swimming. I thought I had reached the safety of five feet, but hadn’t, so when I sank my feet to touch the bottom, my whole body sank as well. Oh, I should mention I still haven’t mastered treading water. I swallowed a little bit of H2O as I went under the first time.
I’d been in such predicaments before, saving myself from drowning by floating on my back. With Ken treading water nearby, holding a foam kickboard for me to grasp, it was unclear who was more concerned as the situation developed—would I be able to gain control of my equilibrium and float to safety, or would Ken have to go into emergency rescue mode?
A little bit of both, it turned out.
We called it a day after that, but not before Ken complimented me on my swimming form, such that it is. Sooner, rather than later, I hope and Ken assures me, I’ll master breathing and treading water. Until then, Ken is now much more aware of my limitations.
Back to School Business: Lots of articles these days about back to school. From my daily PR inbox here’s a not-so-startling newsflash: Most tweens, 87% according to a Unilever sponsored survey, say they are stressed about going back to school. Tweens (generally defined as children ages 8 to 12) are uptight about “issues ranging from new teachers and classes to forming friendships to keeping up with the latest fashion trends.”
Unilever’s solution is for these sweaty kids to use deodorant, preferably its brands, but let’s not go there for now. I’m more focused on what’s causing the anxiety, that squeamish feeling in the pit of their kishkes.
For me it was that part of the first day of school when everyone introduced themselves and stated what their parents did. We hardly ever had any new kids in our class, so it was superfluous to have to identify oneself to classmates who had already matriculated with you from first to fourth grade (fyi, I skipped kindergarten). What never changed was the angst I felt when I had to explain my parents’ occupations.
At first, I would say they made lingerie, until one year I had to explain lingerie meant half-slips and panties. Tee-hees from the rest of the students embarrassed me into demanding a different vocation from my parents. Instead, they told me to just say they were “in business.”
It must have been a magical solution because no one ever questioned what “in business” meant. They could have been part of a holdover of Murder, Inc. for all the kids knew, Murder, Inc. having been a thriving Jewish-Italian Brooklyn enterprise of the 1920s-1940s.
Whatever. “Business” continued to be my parents’ occupations on all official forms for the rest of their working lives.
Showing posts with label drowning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drowning. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2011
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Water Hazard
The tragedy of six teenagers drowning Monday evening in Shreveport, La., as they tried to save a seventh from a similar fate, raised troubling questions. ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked in her opening comments Tuesday night, “Race and Drowning: Why do Afro-American children drown at higher rates?”
They are three times more likely to drown than white children, ABC reported. The segment offered three possible interrelated reasons—Afro-Americans often lack funds to pay for swimming lessons, they have a fear of water, and they mistakenly believe swimming is a white person’s activity (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/teens-drown-wading-louisianas-red-river/story?id=11312631).
All six victims, and the seventh child, did not know how to swim when they slipped into water above their heads. Compounding the tragedy—it transpired in front of their adult family members who were powerless to save them because they, too, did not know how to swim.
On several levels this story touched me personally. Despite 14 years at summer camp, I never learned to swim. Three times I almost drowned. The rare times I enter a pool I am always cognizant of the five foot line. Two weeks ago I wore a life jacket and enjoyed four waterlogged hours in a pool. I think that’s going to be my modus operandi from now on.
My inability to swim motivated me to make sure Dan and Ellie learned by the time they were seven. They’re excellent swimmers. Dan even became a lifeguard and experienced firsthand the dilemma presented in the ABC story. When he was 16, he was hired as a lifeguard at FDR State Park in Yorktown Heights. The park’s pool is one of the largest in the state, and the country. It can accommodate up to 3,500 bathers at one time. It can get that many swimmers because, even at 40 miles away, it is the closest free pool to New York City (Westchester County pools being off limits to non-county residents).
Over the course of the summer of 1995, the lifeguards at FDR State Park saved more than 400 people from drowning. Dan, alone, saved 11. He would tell us that kids from the city, despite not knowing how to swim, would simply jump into the pool without regard to how deep the water was.
I admit to being fearful of drowning. But my mother used to say you couldn’t escape your fate. You could wind up drowning in the shallow waters of your bathtub. And if death by fire was your fate, even being on a ship in the middle of the ocean cannot guarantee your safety.
They are three times more likely to drown than white children, ABC reported. The segment offered three possible interrelated reasons—Afro-Americans often lack funds to pay for swimming lessons, they have a fear of water, and they mistakenly believe swimming is a white person’s activity (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/teens-drown-wading-louisianas-red-river/story?id=11312631).
All six victims, and the seventh child, did not know how to swim when they slipped into water above their heads. Compounding the tragedy—it transpired in front of their adult family members who were powerless to save them because they, too, did not know how to swim.
On several levels this story touched me personally. Despite 14 years at summer camp, I never learned to swim. Three times I almost drowned. The rare times I enter a pool I am always cognizant of the five foot line. Two weeks ago I wore a life jacket and enjoyed four waterlogged hours in a pool. I think that’s going to be my modus operandi from now on.
My inability to swim motivated me to make sure Dan and Ellie learned by the time they were seven. They’re excellent swimmers. Dan even became a lifeguard and experienced firsthand the dilemma presented in the ABC story. When he was 16, he was hired as a lifeguard at FDR State Park in Yorktown Heights. The park’s pool is one of the largest in the state, and the country. It can accommodate up to 3,500 bathers at one time. It can get that many swimmers because, even at 40 miles away, it is the closest free pool to New York City (Westchester County pools being off limits to non-county residents).
Over the course of the summer of 1995, the lifeguards at FDR State Park saved more than 400 people from drowning. Dan, alone, saved 11. He would tell us that kids from the city, despite not knowing how to swim, would simply jump into the pool without regard to how deep the water was.
I admit to being fearful of drowning. But my mother used to say you couldn’t escape your fate. You could wind up drowning in the shallow waters of your bathtub. And if death by fire was your fate, even being on a ship in the middle of the ocean cannot guarantee your safety.
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