THE BEST VIEW: If at first you don’t succeed…

by Norma Best Boucher

I was never a good swimmer. Neither of my parents could swim, so I wore a life jacket throughout my early years. Of course, later on I was embarrassed wearing the jacket, so I figured I should learn to swim, but how?

The answer came during the summer I turned 10 years old – Girl Scout Day Camp.

What a blast! There were crafts, archery, songs, and swimming. The fun began when we got on the bus. Whoever said that singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” was boring was never on the bus with 35 10- to 12-year-old giggly girls loving to say the word “beer.”

After crafts and lunch came swimming. I was prepared. Even before visualization was in my vocabulary, I was practicing it. I imagined myself walking into the cold lake water and swimming gracefully from one dock to the other and back again.

I went up to the swimming instructor. All the girls were yelling and jumping off the dock. Mrs. Tobey was taking names, talking with the girls individually, and shouting instructions to the crowd. I finally managed to reach her and said, “Mrs. Tobey, I don’t know how to swim. What do I do?”

She said, “Jump in.”

“Jump in?” I thought. No, that was not part of my visualization.

I asked again. “Mrs. Tobey, I don’t know how to swim. What do I do?”

Without even so much as a look at me, she gently touched my back and not so gently pushed me off the wharf into the water.

“Help!” I yelled spitting out water.

I heard Mrs. Tobey yell something to me, but I was too busy flailing my arms and trying not to sink to hear what she was saying.

“Help!” I yelled again.

This time I heard what she was saying.

“Stand up!” she yelled.

What did she say? “Stand up!”

Oh, yeah. Stand up and go directly to the bottom where no one will hear my screams for help.

“Stand up!” she yelled again.

That was it. I was too exhausted to continue, so I put my feet down hard deciding to go straight down and to disappear. Everyone would see that she had drowned me when my dead body floated up to the top.

I pushed down really hard, and my feet hit the ground. The next thing I knew I was standing straight up with the water reaching up to my chest.

Although I never really forgave Mrs. Tobey for trying to drown me, she did teach me to swim the dog paddle that summer. I was on my way.

I didn’t see Mrs. Tobey again until my tenth-grade year when my girlfriends decided to take a Junior Life Saving course at the local Boys Club. By then I could do the side stroke, so I thought, “What the heck? I can do this.”

In a matter of weeks I had forgiven Mrs. Tobey for trying to drown me, and I had learned how to swim the breaststroke and the crawl. I did everything she taught us, but apparently, I didn’t do any of it very well. When I tried to save my friend with the tired swimmer’s carry, I was totally submerged under water and so was she. This did not look good.

I passed the written test with a 100, but I failed the swimming/ saving a person’s life part. My friends all passed and moved on to the next level, but I decided to persevere and do this level one more time.

Again, I scored a 100 on the written test, but this time Mrs. Tobey sat me down to say, “Norma, you did very well on the written exam, but you did not pass the swimming test again. You should not try to save anyone else’s life. Just be happy that you can save yourself. Oh, and please do not take this Junior Life Saving course again.”

I was devastated. I knew that I would never be a real lifeguard, but I wanted to be able to say that I had passed that junior course. I mean I had forgiven Mrs. Tobey for trying to drown me when I was 10 but forgive her for failing me two times at junior lifesaving? I had to think about that.

The semester ended at school, and as youth would have it, I forgot about my humiliation of failure and wanted to try something new.

I forgave Mrs. Tobey one more time, and in my youthful delusions I decided to remember the positive parts of her speech to me. “You got a 100 on the written test…you can save yourself…don’t take that swimming course again.”

I had been hearing my girlfriends discussing a new swimming course at the Boys Club. Again, Mrs. Tobey was the instructor. I mulled over the pros and cons. There was no testing involved. I would learn new swimming strokes. I would improve and maybe pass Junior Life Saving next time. I found no cons to the class.

I was about three minutes late to the first class. Mrs. Tobey was giving instructions to the girls who were standing next to the pool. I walked in. There was a low suction noise as the door to the pool closed. Instinctively, Mrs. Tobey turned to acknowledge the sound.

I smiled to say non-verbally, “Sorry I’m late.” and “Here I am, again.”

I wish I could describe accurately the expression on her face, but it would take a better writer than I.

Suffice it to say there was one second of pure horror in her facial expression when she realized that I was going to be in her newest swimming class – water ballet.