truvy
Monday, August 19, 2002
Nessie
I have a bit of a confession to make - I'm scared of swimming in my lake. Well, it's not "my" lake, but the lake up at my house. If I can't see the bottom, I start to get panicky, thinking about all the possible things that could come looming up out of the darkness to get me. Nessie. Giant squid that have somehow miraculously a) become able to live in fresh water and (b) been transported to the Catskills. Giant alligator gar like they had in East Texas. This is not a rational fear, I realize, but hey, I never claimed to be a completely rational being.
I blame Jaws - seriously, it scared me. I used to not like swimming by the deep end of the pool when I was little, scared of what might come out of the drain. I realize of course that this is pathetic, but I've gotten over this aspect of the fear. The lake is quite another story. I rationally know that although there might be some decent sized bass or maybe catfish or something in the lake, there's nothing large enough to do me harm, short of stepping on a fresh-water mussel or something and cutting my foot.
I say to myself, "you can swim along next to your friend Brian here, and you'll be fine. You know you can swim 4 times the distance of this lake with no problem, so just get over it."
All of this is easily said when standing knee-deep in the lake on a hot summer's day, the cool water lapping at your skin & beckoning you to dive in. It's even easily said when swimming in the shallow areas - which by definition to me are any areas I can see the bottom. It's quite another, however, to really go through with it, and to not panic & turn around, swimming at a sprint back to the shallow part of the lake. I can swim pretty fast too - so it's vaguely amusing when viewed by an outsider ("is he racing?" "maybe he's going the wrong way in this race?").
Anyway, I need to come to grips with this pretty fast, because I'll be doing the swimming for our team triathlon on November 3rd in Sydney!
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