I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE TODAY. Or more specifically, DROWN! Uncle Jake knows that I DON’ T LIKE WATER. AT ALL. But he says I have to learn how to swim. He told me that two-thirds of the earth is covered in water. I told him my neighborhood was ALL LAND. But he is right. I was embarrassed last year at Mount Tom when I couldn’t play any games or enjoy the field trip AT ALL. Instead, I sat on the beach, which was okay for a little while in the morning. But by lunchtime, it was SWELTERING. And I was sweating. All the other kids jumped in the water and cooled off and played Chicken, and Sharks and Minnows, and Marco Polo. And what did I do? Sat in the sun sweating and getting sunburned. YUCK!
But the problem is that no matter how hot I was, I was even more worried about getting in the water. I had never learned how to swim! Once, when I was about four, I fell into something called a koi pond. If you don’t know what one of those is, it’s a little fake pond with goldfish in it. People put them in their yards. They aren’t that big, but when you’re four, they’re big enough. Anyway, I was standing there looking at the fish in the little koi pond, and I decided to take a step into the water. What I didn’t know was that koi ponds are kind of like giant plastic cereal bowls buried in the ground—slippery plastic. As soon as I stepped in, I slipped on the plastic and fell completely underwater.
My mom says that I got pulled out right away, but it sure didn’t feel like it. I felt like I was down there, underwater, and COMPLETELY HELPLESS, forever. I never wanted to feel like that again, so ever since that day, I have avoided the water. Because I’M SCARED of it. There, I said it. I’m scared of the water. Uncle Jake says it’s called hydrophobia—the fear of water. Well, whatever you call it, I got it.
That is what made today so cool. Uncle Jake took me down to a place called Bird Bridge. It is a bridge that goes over a slow-moving river. When it gets hot out, a lot of the older kids go down there and hang around and jump off and swim. It is out in the woods, and it has a little beach on one side of the river and a bank on the other side. I was excited when we headed down there. During the car ride, I didn’t feel scared of the water at all. Maybe it was because Uncle Jake was with me, or because he had told me I had to learn to swim, and I accepted that fact. But I wasn’t scared at all while I was in the car.
UNTIL WE GOT TO THE RIVER. As soon as the car stopped, my heart started POUNDING. I looked at the river. The water was dark. It looked black—LIKE THE KOI POND WHERE I ALMOST DIED, BUT BIGGER!
Uncle Jake could tell I was scared. After telling me to calm down, he said that I didn’t have to go in if I didn’t want to, which made me feel like a complete wimp. So now I was feeling terrified and wimpy!
Uncle Jake pulled off his shirt and jumped in the water. He swam across to the other side and back. Then he disappeared underwater. He was gone. I waited. And waited. Then I started to get nervous. Then I started to panic! I knew he must be drowning, caught by a vine or a fish or a monster or something, but I KNEW he was underwater, DROWNING!
Then he popped up laughing and got out of the water. He asked me to come on down to the water’s edge and wade in. I asked him if he was going to push me in, and he promised he wouldn’t. He told me that people are usually scared of things that they don’t understand. I needed to understand that water wasn’t going to hurt me as long as I respected it and learned to handle myself in it. So I walked down and put my feet in. Uncle Jake encouraged me to go a little bit deeper. Then a little deeper.
As I waded into the water, Uncle Jake pointed up to the bridge. “By the end of the summer, you’re going to jump off that bridge and swim back and forth across this river.”
“I don’t know, Uncle Jake,” I told him. “That bridge is tall, and in case you forgot, I don’t even know how to swim!”
Uncle Jake got out of the water, climbed to the top of the bridge, screamed, “HOO-YAH!” and jumped in.
“That looked like fun, right?” he said when he surfaced.
I had to admit that it did.
“By the end of the summer, that will be you.”
By this time, I was standing comfortably in the water up to my knees. This wasn’t too bad.
Then Uncle Jake said, “Okay, time for your head to go under.”
WHAT??!! My toes, my feet—that’s fine. MY HEAD? NO WAY!
Uncle Jake could see that I froze up and I did not want to do it. He calmed me down and convinced me to stay in the water. He stood there and dunked his head a bunch of times, laughing and howling every time he pulled his head out. I have to admit that it looked kind of fun. Then he started yelling. But not at me—he was yelling at the woods, at the river, at the world. And not in a bad way, but like he was having the time of his life.
“AAHHWOOOOOOOOO!” he was howling, every time his head came out of the water. “AAAHHWOOOOOOO!”
He said that in the SEAL Teams they yelled “HOO-YAH” when they had to do something they didn’t want to do or something they were scared to do. He said yelling loud relieved the tension of being scared. He told me to give a yell and see how it felt.
“AAAHHHHWOOOOO!” I yelled. Then again. “AAAAAAAHHHHWOOOOOOOO!”
“Louder!” he told me.
“AAAAAAHHHHWOOOOOOO!!” I yelled again and again. It felt good to let out all the fear. I did it over and over again, with Uncle Jake matching my yells, louder and louder. Then, suddenly, Uncle Jake yelled out, “Now dunk your head! AAAHHHWOOOOOO!”
Without thinking, I dunked my head completely under the water and whipped it out yelling, “AAAAAHWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I did it. It was fun, so I did it again! Then again!
Then, for a few more minutes, Uncle Jake and I sat out there dunking our heads and yelling at the top of our lungs and laughing. Finally, the rush settled down, and we walked out of the water.
“That’s good for today,” Uncle Jake told me.
“Yes, yes it is,” I said back.
We walked back to the car, dried off, and got in.
As we drove away, I realized something: I wasn’t ready to swim yet. But I was not scared anymore.