Youngster takes to swimming lessons like a duck to water
Date published: 5/6/2008
WHEN I WAS 6 years old, I went to South Carolina for a family vacation with my two brothers, ages 11 and 12, and my mother. My big brothers were my heroes, so everything they did, I wanted to do. This included swimming in the deep end of the pool, which horrified my mother.
One hot and humid day at the pool, my brothers met another boy their age, and he had a little sister two years younger than I was. With her "floaties" on her arms, she jumped into the deep end, feet first with her hands over her head. As her elbows entered the water, the "floaties" slipped off, and she sank straight to the bottom. Fortunately her big brother was keeping a close eye on her, and jumped in directly after her and brought her back out of the pool.
After that, I wasn't allowed anywhere near the deep end. However, my mother knew it was unrealistic to keep me out of the water all my life. She wanted me to know how to swim well, so she put me through lessons at the local aquatics center when we got back home to Virginia. I raced through the lessons, obviously a natural.
After I finished the lessons, my mom signed me up for a summer swim team. I started winning heats and earning dozens of ribbons each season. I felt locked up with my toes on the edge of the pool, and the start-sound was my liberator, allowing me to be free in the water.
I stayed after swim practice every night to be in the water and help put away the lane-lines, then get out and put away the markers. Anything I could do to be near the pool, I did it. When I started getting older, I volunteered to show up to practice early so I could help the younger kids with their technique.
Once described by a stranger as a "mean, lean, swimming-machine," I lived to be in the water. If I wasn't at swim practice, I was in my own neighborhood pool. The 15-minute lifeguard breaks seemed to go on for hours.
As a teenager, I still love to swim. I tend to forget about life when my fingertips break the water surface and my legs push me to the opposite end of the pool. And even when my lungs beg for oxygen, I love to test my endurance and wait to take a breath. The more breaths you take, the slower you swim, and I like to picture myself slicing through the pool, unstoppable.
Even if I'm not competing, each time I follow through, touch the concrete and take my goggles off at the end of my workout is a victory.
Jacqueline Stout is a junior at Stafford High School.
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