If you like stories about courageous people with terrible handicaps who surmount insurmountable odds to attain a glorious triumph and then run around high-fiving everyone and shrieking "whoo" while stirring music plays in the background, this isn't the one for you. But I did learn to swim at age 75. That's worth something, no? Maybe a seal clapping ironically?
Tragically, I never acquired this mundane skill at the proper age because after my parents went down on the Titanic, I couldn't bear being around water. That's a pathetic lie. I was just a little scaredy-cat, is all. I remember being delivered to the YMCA pool in downtown Schenectady, New York, for group lessons. Imagine my horror: A pack of bloodthirsty savages intent on mayhem (i.e. eight-year-old boys) shoving, yelling, kicking and splashing each other, while one frazzled adult tries in vain to maintain order and give instruction. Make that naked savages - no swimsuits, for some reason - rendering me even more vulnerable. And there was water. Once beneath the surface of that treacherous liquid, I learned to my dismay, I could not breathe.
I really like to breathe. I fled the pool screaming. Embedded on the sludgy bottom of my brain forever was a small sign reading: "Afraid of the water." I avoided beaches, inland seas and lagoons. I owned no bathing suit. In college, I once attended a fraternity swim party and didn't go near the pool. Working at a summer camp and facing the throw-the-fully-clothed-counsellor-into-the-lake custom the final week, I had to beg abjectly to be heaved into the shallow part.
Cut to old age. Things have changed, I tell myself. I am no longer the timid, quivering pup I once was. Now I scoff at fear and danger. Sort of. Occasionally. Now I can afford private 6 lessons. And most importantly, now I don't live in Schenectady. Plus, I'm thinking, if I expire in the pool, what the hell, I'm old. How much longer have I got, anyway? Yea, verily, I shall learn to swim!
I suppose I should mention that I'm also doing this because my doctor says exercise is the best thing for fighting Parkinson's disease. But let's not make a big deal of that. The swimming was my idea, my symptoms are minimal and anyway, this is a geezer-learns-to-swim story, not a boohoo-I-have-a-disease story. (I've also taken up tai chi and Zumba, but for our purposes here, let's stick with the pool.) The Y nearest me now is the McBurney YMCA on West 14th Street in Manhattan. My teacher: a patient young man named Corey Kulcu-Roca who, addressing two of my paramount concerns, assures me that yes, he knows how to swim, and no, he will not allow me to drown. "Too much paperwork," he says.
©2016 The New York Times News Service
