like a fish

I started swimming when i was little. My dad would take my brother and me to the Y where we took lessons and swam around with him during free swim. I distinctly remember my bubble. It was a pinkish retro bubble (ie- an actual inflatable rubber bladder with the cloth cover- unlike the foam things that are around today), and it had some quite appealing-to-five-year-olds design on it that i loved- maybe a bumble bee? I wish i had a picture of it. Who knows how good i was at that point, but when we moved to a house with a pool when i was nine, my mother signed us all up for session after session of lessons in hopes that none of us would drown in the backyard. I made it to the lifesaving level where you're swimming in your clothes (and blowing them up to make "floaties") before my mother finally was comfortable with my swimming abilities. Though we were in that pool daily from june through september, i can't remember ever swimming any real stroke. Marco polo, jumping tricks off the diving board, playing around with flippers mask and snorkel? Yes. Swimming laps? No. The four of us survived many summers in that pool without incident before they filled it in a few years ago. That was a sad day.
Twenty-years after my last lesson, i decided to start swimming laps at my local Y. Everything was going well. I had a very strong crawl stroke (freestyle to all you weirdos), and with a little practice my backstroke become quite efficient. I wasn't a fan of flip turns, so i took to swimming four lengths in order- one crawl, one backstrokes, one breast stroke, one elementary backstroke. The real work happened on the crawl and backstroke, the other two were my equivalent of stretching. One day it occurred to me that my breast stroke might need to be tweaked a bit. A friend who's also a swim teacher confirmed this- i was doing it all wrong. After checking a few things out, i signed up for five weeks of swim lessons for the low price of $38 (got to love the Y). Three weeks into it, i've now learned the correct way to do the breast stroke (knees together!), butterfly, flip turns, and push offs. What i've also learned is that doing the strokes correctly is much more exhausting than doing them my way. Doh!