I stood there, on the edge of the diving board. The air was cold in the room that day. The instructor stood behind me prodding me to jump. As I peered down into the water, all I saw staring back was a scared kid hoping this was a bad dream. After several minutes of the instructor getting impatient and prodding me, somewhere I found enough energy to hop off the diving board.
My head splashed in first with my feet flopping behind. It wasn’t a perfect ten, but it was the first dive I ever took. Whenever I can get the opportunity, I’ll go swimming. Most of the time I’ll walk into the pool or lake, but sometimes I’ll put my heart in my hands and dive in.
I enjoy going to the YMCA because of the family atmosphere it has. On almost any weekend you can find a dozen or so children toting parents to the pool. Each child is at their own level of skill when it comes to swimming. Some will be doing laps while others are being held by their parents. When a child first learns to swim, they might be a little scared. But the minute they understand how to swim, their fears are gone.
Every now and then I’ll get one of the children, who isn’t too shy, to swim up to me and ask me a question or two. For some reason they will ask me why I’m so skinny (not that I’m the shape of a toothpick or anything like that). The answer is simple, but the explanation is hard. Try telling a five year old that your metabolism rate is higher than normal. It just isn’t that simple.
“When I eat, my body uses up the food faster so it doesn’t turn it into fat,” is one example of how I would explain it. With some children, it takes a little more explaining, though.
“Why do you look like that?” is another question often asked of me. This one is a little harder to explain. I’ve found using examples of other things helps in explaining things to children. Like the old math trick, “If I had two apples and I took one away, how many would I have left?”
So I will redirect the question back to them, “Why does a tree look like it does, and why are there no two trees that look alike?” Another way I answer the question is to describe what happened when I was in my mother’s womb. Those two answers usually do the trick.
Sometimes I’ll just walk through the pool for exercise. Another child might ask, “Can you swim?” Well, the answer to that is a definite yes. I might not swim exactly like they are taught, but I can get around.
Answering children’s questions has never bothered me. I look at the situation and think of it as a learning experience, most of the time for the children, sometimes for me. Another way I look at it is by using a famous quotation, “It takes a community to raise a child.”
My mother did a great job raising me, but it was the other people in the community who also helped in raising me, including the swimming instructor. Whenever I go swimming, I am helping others learn more about people with disabilities. If I can just show one person how similar people with disabilities and people without disabilities are, I feel as if I’ve made a contribution to our community. Anyone up for a lap?