Learning about life in a pool in Muskogee

I learned how to swim in Muskogee Oklahoma.  We were at some motel.  It was the best western or something like that.  It was some small time bull shit but they did have an indoor pool.

It was the early ‘90s and the family rode down to middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma to connect with family and go to a blues festival.  Now, both the blues festival and the family visits had their own issues.  The blues festival was really just old niggas listening to “Mustang Sally” over and over and getting faded on a  dirt road, and my aunt’s house seemed to be built on a 20 degree decline.  Leaving the house felt like something was pulling you back in to it, like some redneckville demon didn’t want you to leave down that road of red dirt. 

One thing about those red dirt roads that I’ll always remember, though, is that once night fell, you could see every star in the sky.  I’ve never looked up and seen a starry night as beautiful as the night I looked up and saw the sky over that red dirt road in Oklahoma.  You don’t see shit like that in the city.  I haven’t seen a night sky like it since.  None of that stuff is as important as that indoor pool, however. 

Two things about this indoor pool: 

!st:  No honeys.

It was right around the time I discovered the opposite sex and when we checked in we had to walk past the pool.  My mom deliberately made us pack our swimming trunks so she could let the pool babysit us for a while and in my 90210 understanding of sexuality, I expected to at least see some scarcely covered b-cups.  Unfortunately, I did see some boobs… on some morbidly obese, middle aged man that did the backstroke for like an hour straight.  Which brings me to point #2.

2^nd: I was going to swim

Deciding to learn how to swim might seem like a small thing to some people but that day, I decided that one way or another I was going to learn to swim. 

I had never swam a stroke to that point and that is no exaggeration.  If there was a test for potential drowning victims I would have scored an 89.  Added to that, I had fallen on my hip while playing flag football in the street with my neighbors the morning before we got to Muskogee.  How bad was it?  I still have the scar.  I had to gently put on my swimming trunks so as to not to get the elastic in the open wound.  I mean it wasn’t a cut either, I slid for about 10 feet on my hip… which is why the scar is still there.

Anyhoo, I made it to the pool; open sore and all.  I saw that big fat man casually back stroking his man boobs back and forth and decided that I was going to learn to swim that very day.

The smart thing would have been to start in the shallow end, but when you’re 4 feet tall and assume 6 feet isn’t that high, a jump in 6 feet of water doesn’t really sound that bad.

I jumped right on in… That was a mistake.  I thought that walking on the floor of a pool while you were completely underwater would be as easy as wading in water waist deep.  Unfortunately that just ain’t true. 

The only ways to move forward on the bottom of a pool is to either fall forward, or make a swimming motion so that you get enough downward pressure on your feet so as to make a decent step.  The only problem with those options is that neither of which can help you get to a place where you can take a breath.

 At the bottom of that pool, I figured this out in about a half of a second.  Instantly, I realized that if I was going to live, the groundwork had to start immediately. 

Most importantly, I needed to go up.  Air was up.  I was correct in thinking that it wouldn’t be hard to get a breath by jumping.  What I didn’t figure was that I also had to breathe out.

Sounds simple and it is.  But when you’re so focused on breathing in, you forget to breathe out.  Every time that I got my face above that water, I would try to breathe in short little forced breaths.  Jump, breathe, force myself forward another 4 feet.  I did this five or six times until I got to the slope and started noticing that the surface was getting easier to breach.

When I realized that I didn’t have to jump any more I made a rush to the shallow end.  Only then did I remember to breathe out.  Along the way to the shallowest wall, I breathed in and out like a small boy that should have drowned.

Being the brainiac that I am, I wondered where it all went wrong.  It took a minute but I realized that all that time, I never breathed out.  I was so concerned with being able to take a breath that I nearly drowned myself by forgetting half of the breathing process.

I stayed my little black ass in the shallow end but I practiced putting my face under water and breathing out. 

I didn’t realize it for a long time but I learned something about life that day in Muskogee.  If you’re going to survive, you have to be willing to learn to swim.  I should have drowned that day but when shit didn’t go according to plan, I made my ass to shallow end.  In a lot of ways, I could have drowned a lot of ways since, but I do now like I did then.  I make a way.  After I make it through, I make sure that I’m better prepared the next time. 

I still can’t swim very well.  When people ask me if I can swim, I tell them that I can avoid drowning.  In reality, though, you’re either swimming or drowning; so I swim.

It might take me a while to get the breathing right or the timing but I won’t panic, I’ll figure something out just like I did in that pool. 

It’s like that poem says, “Pussy is good and that’s no jive, but you gotta swim, not fuck, to stay alive.”

And here I am, still breathing (both out and in).