Home Swimming Pools

Looking back wards after these many long years, I can almost laugh at my close encounter of the third kind with swimming pools. Picture if you can an over weight seventeen year old girl, who never considered herself a swimmer trying to earn her swimming certificate.

What was so unusual about the situation? I was a resident of the Seattle Youth Center for young criminals. I was not placed there under arrest or under police custody. I was a ward of the State of Washington. I had just left a sexually abusive foster home in Lake City, Washington.

When they offered swimming classes, I told them that I was, “afraid of the water because of my fear of drowning.” They decided that my size sixteen figure was too fat for a seventeen year old girl, and that I badly needed exercise. I volunteered to stay at the swallow end of the pool.

However, under their guidance I was soon swimming in the deeper end. I could not relax in the water. I only tensed up no matter how hard I tried. I tried to tell them that my father had the same problem-he could not relax in the water either. My aqua phoeba was an inhereited trait!

The great day finally came. I was to earn my coveted swimming certificate, and had the whole pool to myself. I was about half way through the test when I became tired. As I mentioned before, my muscles could not relax. As a result I grew more tired then their other students.

I wanted to quit and wanted to back out.

The young instructors would not let me quit and decided to help me. First they were supportive, until I said, “I quit!” Every one involved became more frustrated and angry. They had the final solution-use a garden hose of cold water. They decided to hose me down with it. It was a miracle that they did not drown me in the process. Swimming became impossible, and survival became important. I yelled at them to, “Turn the hose off!” After yelling several minutes, they finally listened. I did not earn my certificate that day, nor did I return to the swimming pool the remainder of the summer, 1972.

There was another reason. I felt that the swimming suits were indecent. They were one piece bathing suits with no bra covering. When a young boy said he liked, “looking at me,” I felt embarased and used that as the reason for not going back.

When I reached my foster home in Ballard Washington, I dropped out of Ballard High School, and decided to attend an Alternative High School, People’s School Number One. Why did I decided to drop out of my Junior Year? Number one, I did not want to graduate at age nineteen.

Number two, my foster parents did not give me any changes of clothing or shampoo for my really oily hair. Number three, I felt I had no friends there. After I dropped out and started attending the Alternative High School, the kids at Ballard wanted to know where I had gone.

I told them that I left because I felt friendless. Apparently I had more friends than I knew at the time. But what does all of this have to do with swimming pools? One of the teachers at People School Number One was a former swimming instructor, who had objected to my treatment.

She had left her job at the Seattle Youth Center because of it.

All of the people involved wanted to apologize, and say they were sorry. When she asked for my forgiveness, I give it to her freely. For a young person, who did not have a forgiving nature that was a milestone!