June 27th, 2008

And We All Float On

People who know me a little know I don’t like the outdoors and I hate water and they make fun of me for it. People who know me even better still make fun of me for the outdoors thing, but ease up a little on me when they find out that my deal with water is more of a petrifying fear. I’ve heard it all before and I realize it’s something “normal” people need to do, so I just get through it. That sounds a little mean-spirited, but that isn’t my intent. I’ve just pretty much heard all of the “you don’t go outside??” and “you don’t swim??!” and “you’re outside? won’t you melt?” cracks. It’s fine. Really.

I say all that as preface.

I went out to Washington D.C. a couple of weeks ago to visit a friend. Apparently, the weekend I chose was the hottest weekend there’s ever been in D.C. If it gets hotter there, than I don’t want to know about it, We went to the National Zoo and saw a total of 5 animals, because even the animals knew better than to be out in that kind of heat.

We had access to a pool, and it was hot enough that even I thought it was a good option. There was a shallow end, so I could be comfortably above water but still be cooling off. Even in the shallow end, though, I still get panicky. I have to be near an edge, have to have my hand on something solid, something I can pull myself up to. If I kneel in the shallow end and water gets near my chin, I get a tightness in my chest and I find it difficult to breathe. If my feet can’t touch the bottom, I really do get panicked, really panicked. Can’t breathe, afraid, deer-in-headlights, the whole works. Fear. Abject fear.

I took swimming lessons about five years ago. I thought it might help with some of this. My instructor was… less than patient, shall we say. The first 15 minutes of every lesson was the same thing: me getting used to being in the water – not getting used to the temperature, actually getting used to the water and trying not to stop breathing from freaking out. By the end of my ten or so lessons, I actually was able to backstroke across the pool, and had started learning … the frontstroke? I don’t know what it was, but I know I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kick my legs in any sort of effective method.

Five years later, and this is the first time I’ve been back in a pool. I’ve forgotten everything, including how to float. The water is colder than it looks, and I think of Jack’s line in Titanic about how freezing water feels like “a thousand knives.” I eventually am mostly in and used to the temperature, but I have moments of panic. I feel I am going to slip and go under at any moment. I don’t feel safe.

There are Funnoodles available, so I get one, but even it is not helping. I can hold it underwater, so I don’t believe it will do the job on holding me up. After a few minutes of not trusting it, it is suggested to me that I get another one. So now I have two Funnoodles, and it’s actually not horrible. I get to the point where I can lift my feet from the bottom and rest on just the Funnoodles – on which I have a death grip, you understand – and it’s okay. I’m still in the shallow end, but I’m okay.

At some point, I also grabbed hold of the floating lounge she was laying on, another level of security. Somewhere directly after that, I made the conscious decision to launch out into the deep end. Funnoodles firmly wrapped around me and held in a hand-vise, other hand holding onto the lounge for dear life, I am soon over the deepest part of the pool. I don’t know how deep it is, but there is a diving board over it, and my feet are nowhere near touching.

The panic doesn’t start from any place in particular, it’s just all over me at once. I close my eyes, I look up, I focus on breathing. It doesn’t go away completely, but it lessens. We do a couple of laps around the pool, specifically getting near the edge so I can occasionally feel cement. Eventually, though, I push us back over to above the deepest part.

I’m floating. I’m disconnected. I imagine what it’s like to be in space, untethered by gravity. I blather about how astronauts train underwater, and how I could never do it. I can’t leave a moment alone – probably more insecurity.

I get a strange sense of peace floating there. There’s not any noise from the road, and the only other sound is birdspeak. I’m floating in a pool, I’m talking to a good friend, and everything is all right. It would be easy to pile meaning on top of this, some deep lesson to be learned about launching into the unknown or trusting or somesuch, but that would take away from the simplicity of it, I think, and would also venture into cliché territory. I think I’d rather just sing along with Modest Mouse:

And we’ll all float on, okay

May 21st, 2008

Three Things

When I see Wayne Brady on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” or Turk on “Scrubs” do some fancy Michael Jackson-like dancing, it always makes me wish I could do it myself. Not because I want to hit nightclubs and enter competitions or anything, just because I think it’d be fun to be able to do it, and I like making people laugh. Doing an MJ impression in an improv show – a good impression, anyway – is a sure-fire laugh-getter. I can’t explain it, but it’s true. Sadly, it doesn’t look like I’ll be mastering that particular talent any time soon, and I won’t explain what kind of research has been done to engender that conclusion.

Lamenting that got me thinking about other things that I’ve wanted to learn over the course of my life but never did. I present the following three in order of least likely to most likely still possible.

  • Breakdancing – As if my age didn’t reveal it anyway, this will certainly prove that I am a child of the 80s. I was always mesmerized by people spinning on their backs and popping and locking and flipping and all of that. I was amazed by the physicality of it all. One weekend in high school, I was going to stay overnight at my friend Larry’s house, so I got a “How To Breakdance” book from the library. After everyone else went to bed, we went into the kitchen (it had the smoothest floor, see) and tried a thing or two… for about 2 minutes. It was about then that we realized a) learning dancing from books is futile at best and b) we were the whitest whites that ever whited. That was my first and last attempt at learning to breakdance.
  • Skateboarding – You can add surfing and snowboarding to this one, because there’s apparently something about riding a board of some sort that appeals to me – surfing’s right out because of my lack of desire to drown, but the other two here still tug on me every so often. Several (15) years ago I bought a $20 skateboard at Wal-Mart and started riding it around in various church parking lots while on tour. I never did anything but ride it around, because that’s all I could (barely) do. I wanted to Stalefish, Backside 540, and Ollie into a Nosegrind, sure, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to go about any of it. I figured books wouldn’t be much help to me, and I didn’t know how else to go about learning. I met a fellow on tour who showed me how to do an Ollie, and I understood it conceptually, but could never pull it off, in part, perhaps, because my $20 Wal-Mart skateboard weighed as much as an M4 Sherman tank. Though my church has recently built a skate park, I think this one has passed me by, too, regardless of Tony Hawk’s being 40 and still at it. I’ll stick to playing his games and wearing his shoes.
  • Martial Arts – We can thank Bruce Lee, – and, to a lesser extent, my friend Dave – for this one. Dave’s the one who introduced me to Bruce Lee movies, and his dad studied martial arts (karate and Jeet Kune Do, I believe), and I thought it was just about the coolest thing that ever. Sure, the one-inch punches and flying kicks were what initially drew me to it, but as I came to understand it more it was the discipline and focus that became the draw. This one is still crawling around in my brain and actually has the most possibility of happening of any of these. While it would be difficult for a person my age to master a martial art, by design they can be picked up by people in almost any age group. The physical exercise and mental discipline would be good for me… but are also the biggest hindrances to me ever doing it.

I’m not sure why most of the things I’d like to learn are things that involve possible skull-cracking, but I can’t imagine that doesn’t play a big role in why I haven’t done any of them.

So what’s something you’ve wanted to learn but haven’t? Anyone want to go dojo-shopping with me?

November 28th, 2007

Pay It Forward

I found this here… I was hesitant to comment because I have no idea what I can hand-make and send to someone, but I think the idea is neat (and I liked the movie!), so I thought I’d make the leap.

Here’s the deal:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days. That is my promise. The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

The key phrases here are “I don’t know what that gift will be yet” and “within 365 days.”

This otter be interesting…