I Panicked

When I was eight or nine years old I went to a Baptist church camp outside of LA for ten days. For the most part the entire thing was awful. Church thrice a day and rules to make the mind numb. There was a pool but it was so small that the entire camp couldn’t all go at once. In fact it was so small that each cabin got only one day that they were allowed in the pool during the whole time there. The day my cabin was allowed to go I found myself being tortured but a nice Christian boy. Despite my size now, I was never a tall child. I just kept growing after everyone stopped. This kid was older and larger than me and decided it would be fun to drown me, which he proceeded to do with gusto. Now you might imagine that if you were in a pool dunking someone repeatedly that you’d stop when the lifeguard walked by and you’d probably be right, but then, you’d be an amateur. This kid would dunk me under the water, wrap his legs around my neck and hold me down until the lifeguard would pass out of site. I have no idea how long this lasted, but needless to say it felt like and eternity in the Baptist pool. When I finally managed to bore him he let me go at which point, exhausted I sank like a rock. One of the other kids helped drag me to the edge of the pool where I proceed to cough and heave up water as I hung on the edge of the pool. The life guard finally managed to come around and notice me and said, “Get off the ledge, you can’t hang on to the ledge like that.”

Because it is convenient, I blame that incident for my poor swimming skills and my general fear of large bodies of water, or at least large bodies of water where I can’t touch bottom. The story of my brother being dragged out to sea by a riptide and finally coming ashore two miles down the beach as well as the movie Jaws (“Are there sharks it the bath tub mom?”) all combined to keep me scared and, as a result, make me a terrible swimmer.

And that is why surfing has been, until recently, such a huge success for me. I finally felt safe in the water. The wetsuits buoyancy, the sense of camaraderie, the presence of like minded individuals of all levels together and mostly my enthusiasm for what I denied myself for so long came together to make me feel safe in the water. One thing I did not realize however was how much reliance I had put in being attached to the board itself.

Surfing, for the beginner, or at least this beginner, is a lot of work. There is a lot of paddling going on. Getting past the break water is by far the most significant hurdle. While upper body strength is key, there is also a certain finesse required to make it out. And it is exhausting. So exhausting that I often would take breaks after catching a wave where I could drop by board off and simply jump into the sea to frolic until my arms were a bit rested. Then back to the board for more surfing.

This Sunday I went out with a surfing buddy located of Craigslist. We hopped in the water and each managed to get out past the breaks. After a while I decided to ditch my board and coming out noticed how strong the tide was. Standing up to my chest in water I was unable to take a single steep forward toward the shore. I struggled for a moment, then hopped on my board and began paddling in. Traveling on the surface of the water the current had little effect on my momentum and I quickly made it to the beach, ditched my board and jumped back in to swim. My new surfing buddy, also tired, joined me for a quick dip.

At some point I got a mouth full of water. I tried to stand only to realize that was deeper than I had thought. I remembered how strong the tide had been getting out and thought maybe we had been pulled out to far. And I basically lost it. My mind started racing and I panicked. I called to my buddy and said I though we were getting pulled out by the tide and that in any case I was panicking. At first incredulous, she told me to relax, and remember that I was buoyant, that the tide wasn’t going to pull us out that I should calmly swim toward shore. I laid on my back, focused on the sky and did the backstroke. Within a minute I could touch bottom and a wave of relief passed over me. Then a wave of total and complete embarrassment. A wave that continues to roll over me even now.

A few things I realized from that day.

• My mind was the enemy. Rather than take the evidence at hand, I took suppositions and inferences about what was happening and let them take over. I’m a fit adult. I can tread water for hours in a wetsuit, there were a dozen people within shouting distance on boards. Linda Mar is a beginner beach and as such is very safe, strong tides and all. If I had simply turned to shore when I missed bottom and swam rather than thought about it I would have been fine.
  
• I can not replace enthusiasm with skill. I love surfing, love to be in the water. I know the theory of surfing and how I should behave in the water. That is not the same as being skilled or practiced in those theories. I am a poor swimmer and all the enthusiasm in the world does not make up for that. That lack of confidence in my swimming abilities is dangerous to myself and to others.
  
• The buddy system is not a joke. A calming voice was all it took me to act.
  
• I need to practice swimming and I need to do so ASAP. Pushups does not a swimmer make.
  
• I found that laying on my back and looking up at the sky was a better way to swim calmly. As I was initially trying to make it to shore I picked a building to focus on and swam toward it. However, swimming ten feet seems like nothing when looking at an object half a mile away. By flipping on my back I couldn’t see how little headway I was making, and as a consequence couldn’t worry about how little it appeared.

Honestly I’m not sure the point of posting this because, as I mentioned the whole experience is massively embarrassing. It’s like panicking on a roller coaster. However, having said that if this is useful information to any one, I’d feel remise in not sharing it with other.