Thursday, 7/10/03 - 22:00
To celebrate our second anniversary we're learning how to scuba dive -- not only because it's one of the classiest ways ever to commit suicide, but because we expect it to be great fun. Santa Barbara's Channel Islands are supposedly super keen underwater on account of kelp forests, coral reefs, and sea lions. I mean, it's all about enjoying nature in the most equipment-heavy and un-natural way we can find without actually taking the work out of it.
Yesterday was our second scuba class. There are two more classes next week, then two days of open water diving before we get certified. I'd assumed the pool classes would completely suck, but in fact they're turning out to be oddly fun. Why oddly? Because before the class started I knew that I'd probably be the slowest learner in the pool, and that is indeed the case. It takes someone special to rival my inability to learn physical skills of any sort.
You can probably tell just by looking at me that in elementary school I was the one who couldn't figure out how to skip when everyone else in the class already knew how, never learned to do cartwheels or swim the crawl, and half the time couldn't finish a mile run without throwing up -- or maybe you can't tell, but I'm pretty sure that the word INEPT is stamped somewhere on my forehead and it's indirectly led me into some nice social clubs over the years, including the ones y'all are part of. I guess maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much in elementary school if I hadn't been trying as hard as I could (short of actually practicing at home) and failing anyway. And ever since, I've been mortified at the idea of jogging or going to a gym or doing any sort of exercising in public.
Middle school gym wasn't as bad, in part because our athletic fields were next to a romantic lake graced by a forest and a castle-like boat house, a scene which I spent long periods contemplating while technically playing defense. Other times we went canoeing. We didn't have a pool, but we did have a bowling alley and an ice-skating rink.
Fortunately my high school didn't have gym classes at all. We were required to participate in after school activities, and some of those had to be vaguely related to athletics, but it turns out that a combination of community service, walking, forensics, and managing the JV soccer team was all I needed. It also turns out that if you decided to do walking in a season when it wasn't offered as a group activity, you got to do it by yourself as an independent study. And so I spent hours wandering the winter evenings in the early nightfall before dinner, singing Nirvana as I walked through the snowy streets when all the houses look homiest and full of light. Good times. Oddly enough, Julie, my best friend in high school, was a tremendous athlete who spent hours everyday ice-skating.
I know this burdensome feeling of incompetence is partially an artifact of the way I narrate my life. There are a number of counterexamples, but they seem oddly unreal. Despite the fact that I never could figure out the crawl, I was really good at the breast stroke. My swim instructor pointed me out as a textbook example and I could swim for ages. Secondly, I mostly passed the University of Chicago phys ed requirement -- at least I got out of the need to do anything physical, and instead spent a quarter flirting with the hot goth in my CPR class. The gym department made the mistake of evaluating us primarily by taking "before" and "after" readings on handheld heart rate monitors. My heart rate was high before the test because I was damn nervous. Afterwards I stared at the heart rate monitor as I stood in line to have my number read, and I concentrated on making the numbers go down. It turned out not to be all that hard. Mind over matter -- the same tactic which hadn't worked in elementary school.
What I keep marveling at in the scuba classes so far is that I don't really mind being the slow one and the repeated attempted water-breather, as long as I can eventually get certified. The instructor is nice. My classmates are nice, and I don't think they're even laughing at me in secret. It's like I grew up at some point and so did everybody else, back when I wasn't looking. All the same, I can't help but think with a twinge of pride that learning how to dive is making me a better character.
Long live Diaryland!
The five most recent entries:
More Naval Gazing - Saturday, 8/13/05
Anniversary Diving - Friday, 8/12/05
Academic Tip of the Week - Tuesday, May. 17, 2005
How to tell a Midwesterner - Sunday, 4/24/05
Academic Feelings - Thursday, 4/21/05
Ted's most recent entry:
Monday, May 12