On average, ten people drown every day in the U.S. Two of them are 14 or younger.
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1-14.
The fatal drowning rate of African American children ages 5 to 14 is almost three times that of white children in the same age range.
For every child who drowns, five receive emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries, which can cause severe brain damage that may result in long-term disabilities such as memory problems, learning disabilities, and permanent loss of basic functioning.
Participation in swimming lessons reduces the risk of drowning among children ages 1-4 years by 88 percent.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“Hey, you wanna race?”
Inevitably some boy – and it’s always a boy – challenges me to a duel and, oh, it is so on. One of us has to rule the pool, and I’m past the age where I’m going to let it be an 11-year-old who doesn’t have to fight Atlanta traffic five days a week.
Maybe a challenge from this middle-schooler to me, a 40-year-old woman, is ridiculous, but I take it as a compliment. Learn to swim when you’re 34 and you’ll understand.
That I’m even in the pool is amazing, pushing off from the wall, calculating how much air I’m going to need to get to the other side, knowing that all it takes for me to win are steady, clean strokes and kicks, decent form and the confidence to put my face beneath the water.
The challenge to learn happened on a family trip to Florida eight years ago, when my then-10-year-old niece threw down the gauntlet regarding my fear of water. When I told her I couldn’t swim, she had an answer.
“Well,” she said in that matter-of-fact tone that 10-year-olds have, “you’ll just have to learn.”
Yes. I would just have to learn.
First, let’s rewind to the summer when I learned that there was a Team Sink and Team Swim, and I was Team Sink’s mascot. June 1977. I am 5, in a pool, miserable. I’m taking swimming lessons, and I can’t put my face under the water.
I am what no kid wants to be – chicken.
Fast-forward to 1982-88. I spend those years at the Fort Gillem pool. Another niece, who spends part of her summers with us and who’s three years older than me, is a hit with the lifeguards. She’s an excellent swimmer. They work with her on her diving. I’m the teenager stuck on the shallow side with the little kids.
Chicken.
Jump to 2006. I am a 30-something who holds a respectable job. The list of things Mandi Can’t Do has shortened. Swimming, however, is still there.
Should there come a point in your life when you’d like to find yourself in the deep end of a swimming pool without the use of blow-up arm floaties, I suggest swallowing every shred of pride you have, signing up for swimming lessons and finding yourself, as I did, the only grownup in a class of elementary school kids.
Every Saturday for two months, you show up for an hour of remedial childhood. But you find that you’re a natural. Finally. You master advanced strokes, something you never imagined yourself doing. In fact, you are so good your instructor lets you work on your form while the rest of the class try to make it across the pool without going under. So there, girl in Hello Kitty one-piece who called your goggles “dorky.”
But back to my racing career. I’m unbeaten so far (1-0 this year) and here’s how the post-race scenario often plays out.
“You a real swimmer or something?” the boy usually asks me, after I’ve smoked him. “Man, you’re fast!”
I keep extra goggles in my swim bag, and I tell him to go grab a pair. We talk about how he probably would have beaten me if if he’d bent his arms like so or kept his legs straight or pointed his toes.
He tries. But he’s still having trouble. What’s the real problem? He’s kind of afraid to put his face underwater.
So we work on that. I pass along what I’ve learned, or try to anyway. You’re only as good as your competition, after all. I want to swim against the best.
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