While
making the play in a ball game, he would
narrate: “George is dropping back, way back, he’s got the ball. He’s got it.”
The announcing of his feats was not limited to baseball. He helped his older brother deliver
newspapers.
“George
rolls up the newspaper and tucks it into the shape of a rocket. George winds up, swings around and lobs the
paper up on the second floor porch. Perfect
Throw! Customer Satisfaction!”
Or
even making a sandwich for a sibling.
“George is laying down the peanut butter at a perfect right angle to the
next layer of jelly. Flip! Slap! A perfect slice down the middle and
served on a paper plate to a grateful little sister. Customer Satisfaction!”
George
shaped his mouth into a large “O” and forced his breath out to make the most
eerily life-like sound of a pleased crowd at the stadium roaring their
approval.
I
suppose I could have asked any of the kids … but the truth was that I would ask
no one. Asking for help showed I didn’t
know something. I was supposed to be the smartest kid in my neighborhood
for my age and among the smartest at school. I read book after book, everything
that passed under my nose. I did well in
my classes, had an encyclopedic mind and could spell with the best of
them. Effortlessly, numbers stayed
in my head. I was a walking telephone
directory for friends and family and was worth having around if you needed to
make a lot of calls. But those were the
only endeavors at which I excelled. I played ball but not very well.
No one ever wanted me on their team. In bicycle or foot races and any
other competitive activity calling for strength and stamina I did poorly.
My intellect was the only thing I possessed that brought me honor and
praise. I seemed to know everything. I had to know everything
because I had nothing else going for me. My currency was knowledge, and
although I was probably unaware of it, I was attempting to build my own island
made from books.
The
year before, 1952, all of us boys in the neighborhood tried out for Little
League. My turn at bat was seared into
my memory. I couldn’t bat even a slow
ball pitched to me by a kindly man who was trying to save me from death by embarrassment
at my first and last baseball practice.
I stood at home plate swinging at each pitch as the ball apparently
disappeared or moved away from me every time I swung the bat. Everybody laughed at me. I mean everybody, even a few parents. George finally came up to the plate and
pulled the bat out of my hands. He got
away with it because the adults were glad to see the show end and let me slink away
to the bench. Ordinarily I could swing
on a ball and hit it. Not under
pressure, however, and of course not very far.
I promised myself it would be the last time I allowed myself to be seen failing.
After that, not wanting to appear stupid or naive prevented me from asking for
help for a long time.
So, not surprisingly, I didn’t seek
any assistance in my neighborhood about anything. I didn’t show weakness. Instead, I used my strengths to help me in my
quest. I used my head. But after all, it was only the head of a ten year old.
Still,
I was far from dumb. At ten years old I had top honors in the fourth grade and
just before summer vacation I finished a paper for extra credit on the Great
Inventors of All Time. I wrote of men
who had forged new paths to knowledge and brought about our modern world, who
had improved the lives of countless millions in the centuries to follow. Surely I could apply myself successfully to
the problem at hand.
Soon a plan of attack occurred to
me. I’d teach myself to swim. It couldn’t be all that difficult to discover
the secrets of staying on the top of the water.
Lots of animals and little kids knew how to do it. I’d use the Scientific Method, just like
Pasteur, Marconi and the Wright Brothers.
From hypothesis and observation to ... I can’t remember what came after
them ... I should certainly be able to work out the details.
First I would do the basic research. It would all be from books, of course, except
for a conversation with my father. He
would never laugh at me. He never
laughed at anything.
“How
can I learn to swim, Dad?” I said to him as he sat in our living room and read
his newspaper.
“We’re Irish,” he said. “We don’t swim.”
“Why not, Dad?”
From behind his newspaper he said, “I
never tried, to be honest. But we’re
solid built, very thick bodied and we don’t float.” He lowered the paper and looked at me. “Besides, the Irish were
seafarers, and sailors never learn to swim.”
“They don’t?”
“No,” he said. “If your ship went down, you’d just prolong
the agony of dying.”
“How do you mean?” I said.
“Well, you’d be swimming around out
there on the ocean for half an hour worrying about it. And then you’d drown. Best to get it over with, I think.”
“You mean just die if our ship goes down?”
“ Sure,.” he said. “Gotta go sometime.”
“I wouldn’t want to die.”
“Then don’t get on a ship,” he said.
I didn’t tell him many of the
kids in our neighborhood were Irish and they all swam like sea otters.
I followed up with a close study of the
chapter on water in my Cub Scout Handbook and then I rode my bike to the
library to search for more information.
As I walked through the large brass doors into the main hall of the
century old building, it occurred to me I was standing in the most comfortable
place on earth for me. I couldn’t quite
re-capture the urgency to learn about swimming.
I’d have rather stayed cooped up back among the shelves of books all day
long. Especially now that the librarian
allowed me free reign of the complete library.
“You’re supposed to be in the Children’s
Room, young man,” said a new librarian I didn’t recognize when she caught me in
the Medical Section under the sign, “Adults Only.”
“I couldn’t find anything about
swimming there,” I said, “except for water safety rules.”
“What more did you want at your age?”
“I'm learning to swim,” I admitted.
“You should take lessons.”
“I am … sort of.”
She leaned over me and saw I had a
medical dictionary open to a page showing a naked female torso. She put her
hand over the image.
“And what does this have to do with
swimming, young man?”
“I was in 'S' looking for 'Swimming.”
“No, you're not. You're in 'R.' 'Reproduction.'”
“I mean I'm in 'R' looking for 'S.'”
“How about you go looking for the
Children's Room again?”
But I was finished with the books. What the Scientific Method called “a review
of the literature” had not been very
helpful, except for what I'd learned about Reproduction. Someday that information might come in
handy. However, it was now time to move
my study to the field for a series of observations.
Most mornings during the summer the
boys from my neighborhood headed out Burrstone Road to the public swimming pool
about a mile away. They wound
their swim suits up in towels and
tucked the rolls under their arms. I
waited ten minutes and then mounted my bicycle to follow them.
The pool sat behind a 1930’s Art Deco
style building with a high fluted clock tower above the main door. The tower rose majestically on one end of a
rectangular grassy park that rolled down to a baseball diamond at the other
end. Wide paved walkways ran through the
grass in the center of the park. Along the front of the property a fairly busy
street was marked by huge pot holes. On
the way to the pool, I could hear tires slam into them from time to time. Along the back of the park was a patch of
woods with maple and oak trees.
I crossed a strip of grass and climbed
up one of the maple trees to overlook the pool. There I could hear the splashes
and shouts drift my way as I spied upon the neighborhood boys. Mostly they jumped from the diving boards and
swam to a ladder no more than twenty or thirty feet away, repeating the process
over and over. I kept an eye on the
entire pool, too, from the shallow water
where the little ones hung out to the deep end that got most of my
attention. I hoped to figure out how the
swimmers were able to move through the water without sinking.
Their arms and legs appeared to help
them to swim when moved in certain ways.
The method looked easy enough. But I wondered if there was more to
swimming than met the eye. I wanted to
know as much as possible before I jumped into water over my head.
After watching people in the water a
couple of days from my perch among the leafy limbs, I had no reason to doubt I
had discovered everything there was to know about staying afloat. I decided to put my knowledge down on paper
and call it my Theory of Swimming. I got
the first part of the name from a book I’d read called The Theory of Rain. The well illustrated book was for older
children and was about a boy who thought he could predict the weather. The story was supposed to have been written
by a youngster like myself and the author offered sure-fire methods for weather
forecasting. Each time I used them I
predicted only tornadoes and hurricanes … usually every week. Never a spring shower or light snow ending by
morning, only calamity. No one believed
me, and eventually I didn't believe the forecasts either. Almost every time I followed the book's
flowchart while I observed the cloud type, wind speed and direction,
temperature and month of the year, the answer came out, “Tornado: Take Shelter
Now,” or “Hurricane: Bring lawn chairs indoors.”
From my fourth grade extra credit
project I knew how to construct a proper report of a new scientific finding. Of course, swimming was new only to me. Here
was my Theory of Swimming, the complete edition.
I. Hypothesis:
a human being can swim if he finds himself in deep water and moves his arms and
legs in the correct way, and the waves are not too high.
II. Observations: After three days of sitting in a tree and
observing the local swimming pool, this is what I saw in each area of the pool.
II.1. Shallow
part of pool.
Mostly little kids here. They
weren’t swimming. Once in a while a big
kid got in and ignored the little kids.
The water came to about halfway between his knees and waist.
Why he was there I don’t know, but I guessed he was practicing to
swim. In fact, I think it was the same
kid on three different days. Anyway, he
fell forward into the water and seemed to push off with his feet. He made swimming motions with his arms and
legs and swam about twenty feet each time.
II.2. Middle
part of pool.
Water about four feet deep.
Mostly junior high school kids here. Boys tried to push girls under water
and were thrown out of pool by lifeguard.
Stupid, but it kinda looked like fun.
No one even tried to swim. I
don’t know if that’s because they had other interests or because of the water’s
depth. More on that later.
II.3. Deep end
of pool. Water about 16 feet
deep under the diving boards. Here
everyone is swimming (and not drowning.) They jump off the diving board and
land under water at the bottom of the pool, and then come back up and swim to a
ladder and climb out of the water. They
do this over and over. No one jumps in
the water from the side of the pool, only from the diving boards. More about that later.
III. Impressions.
I saw the same kind of stuff every day.
Some boys wanted to swim, but most just kept cannon-balling into the
pool from the sides in the four foot section. Girls my age and older sunned
themselves by the side of the pool or got in the water, where they stood and
waited for boys to drown them. They
screamed, but not in a way where anyone believed they were really worried. Kids swam at the deep end and one kid swam at
the shallow end. No one swam in the
middle. I suspect they can’t. I mean my theory is that humans can swim in
shallow or deep water, but not in between, although I’m not sure why. And I also suspect that in the deep end,
people can swim only if they use the diving board.
IV. Progress:
I should be able to
swim with success if I use the following method, now and forever to be called
The Me Method. Here it is:
1.Get in the water.
2.Push off with feet braced against something.
3a. Get entire body up on the surface
of the water.
3b. Do not let legs sink.
4. Push forward with feet.
5. Use arms and hands to pull water out of
your way and behind you.
6. Keep kicking legs and feet
That was it. I now knew how to swim, even though I hadn’t
tried it yet. But I had figured it
out. Pretty much.
I wrote my paper during the heat of a
July afternoon as I lay in a favorite spot under the huge old lilac bushes in
our back yard. The slightest breeze
rustled the leaves and helped the air to sound cooler. Over and over I
pictured my arms and legs moving while I pushed the water behind me and zoomed
ahead in the pool. Admittedly, Step
3a., getting my body up on the surface, was a little hazy and I wasn't sure how
to do it. But I reminded myself of the
feats of great men I had read about for my extra credit paper. Most had not worked out all the details when
they embarked on their journeys to fame and fortune. Alexander Bell hadn’t envisioned long
distance telephone calls when he shouted, “Watson, come here. I need you.”
Thomas Edison was just playing around with a needle and a cone of paper
when he invented the phonograph. Even a
ten year old saw courage mattered as
much as knowledge or vision. The trick
was not to be afraid, I told myself. I
looked down the line of lilac bushes strung along the driveway behind the house
down to the decrepit old garage my father never put his car in. He was
afraid the building would fall down some night in a windstorm, his car the
first victim. Dad was always afraid of something.
The next day, I decided to test
out The Me Method of Swimming. I waited
until later in the morning when I knew the local boys would not be at the
pool. I took one of the older towels
from our bathroom, wrapped it around my swimming trunks and headed through the
kitchen toward the back door. My mother
stopped me and asked where I was going.
“Swimming,” I said with a practiced
look of innocence on my face.
“Do you know how to swim?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said,’ “I’ve been studying it.
I’m going over to the pool to practice.”
Mom came across the kitchen and put her
arms around me. A short woman, she
pulled me against her chest. I inhaled the wonderful smell of cinnamon for
supper’s apple desert. “Promise me
something,” she said. “Before you get in the water, tell the lifeguard what
you’re doing and ask him to watch you.”
“OK, I will.”
“And practice swimming in the shallow
end of the pool.”
“OK, I will.”
“This is important,” she said
softly. “If you find you can’t swim, ask
for help.”
I gently pushed away from her and left
the kitchen, going out the back door without comment.
The pool was behind the
clock tower building and was surrounded by a tall wire fence. I’d never been
inside the building or the pool. This was it, I told myself. Do or die, although I certainly didn't want
the latter. It occurred to me to wonder
why anyone really needed to swim. I
supposed I could stay off boats and never have to worry about drowning. Or sail away without being able to swim. After all, people traveled on airplanes and
they couldn't flap their arms and fly.
Still, knowing how to swim might be useful. But then again, I could slip in the bath tub
some day, knock my head, pass out and drown in the tub. Knowing how to swim wouldn't help in that
case.
I looked up in the
sky. Maybe a storm was coming and
another day might be better for throwing myself into deep water. There wasn't a cloud in sight, but a storm
with thunder and lightning could still come up at any moment and make swimming
dangerous. I had worked the Theory of
Rain flowchart yesterday and it said a hurricane might soon be bearing down on
us. Oh, what was the use? I couldn't get out of the promise I had made
to myself to learn to swim at any cost.
The Theory of Rain was wrong. I
didn't need to worry about a hurricane.
My Theory of Swimming wasn’t wrong.
It had to be right. I couldn’t
think of any reason why it wasn’t right.
I walked through the
brass plated front door and a pretty teenaged girl asked for a dime and shoved
a wire basket at me. I joined a line of boys and followed them. Soon I was in a room where they were getting
undressed and putting their trunks on. I watched them closely so I'd know
what to do. They put their clothing into
the basket and headed out another door. I did the same and came to a
counter where an attendant handed me a brass tag on a wrist band to wear. He
reached for my basket.
I didn’t let go. I remembered I'd brought my Roy Rogers Secret
Decoder Ring with me that wrote underwater.
I had seen the offer on the back of a cereal box and immediately became
enthralled with the idea of writing notes to my aunt and cousins while sitting
underwater. Of course they'd be short
messages. I didn't have the lung
capacity for a long letter. My older
brother suggested I just fill the kitchen sink and hang over it while I
breathed and wrote as long a letter as I wanted.
“And as long as you’re
there, do the dishes,” he said.
But that couldn't compare
to the idea of actually sending Aunt Martha and the girls a note from beneath
the surface of the public swimming pool … after I dried out the paper.
“Wait,” I said to the
teenaged attendant. “I need to get my
ring out of my pants.”
“No jewelry allowed in
the pool, kid.”
“But I need to get
it. It writes underwater.”
He pulled the basket from
my grasp. “Move along, Shakespeare.”
The teenager put my
basket up on a shelf with the others. The boy behind me pushed on my back and I
was shoved away from the counter.
Following the line of
boys, I came next to a tiled room where ten shower heads were arranged five on
a side. Ten boys at a time, we each
stood under the shower and pulled a chain descending from high on the wall. The water was brutally cold as it cascaded
down on my head and shoulders. I
immediately bolted from under the stream, but a fat old guy in a T-shirt and
green janitor pants pushed me back and made every one of us stay under the
shower until the stream ended automatically in half a minute.
I followed the line of
boys and began to hear the shouting and splashing of a few hundred over-excited
youngsters jumping around in the water. I was getting scared again. I
wished I’d gone to the bathroom before I left the house, a reason to turn back
now. Or hurry up and get in the water to
relieve myself. Years later I’d hear the
man who injected chemicals into the water looked out at the pool to judge the
number of boys versus girls before determining the amount of chlorine powder to
wallop down the pipe.
Up ahead at the front of
the line, a doorway led outside to the pool.
A teenage lifeguard was asking each boy to spread his toes, for what I
didn’t know. I looked down at my feet. Whatever the next test was, if my toes
flunked I could go home and forget about this swimming thing. Something about The Me Method of Swimming was
beginning to bother me and now I felt I'd be much more comfortable at home
reading my Cub Scout Handbook for a third time.
It was always more comfortable to read about something rather than do
it. Maybe in the calmness of a sunny
morning out on the front porch in an old wooden rocker the haziness of step 3a.. would clear up and a solution
present itself. I still wasn’t sure how
to get my body up to the surface of the water.
My toes passed the test
and I was outside. The noise was ear-splitting ... kids screaming and
jumping into a pool already filled to the brim with other children. I thought
of the Bible scene where Moses and all the people of Israel ran or were chased
into Red Sea and were trying to move ahead to the far shore. Here in the pool, nobody went anywhere. The kids just kept getting out and jumping
back in. A few of the younger children
cried for reasons known only to them.
Most of the kids my age were laughing and some coughed water up from
their lungs. There was a great deal of
what my grandmother called “carrying on.”
Hundreds of us were under the care of a few 15 and 16 year old lifeguards.
Although I had
convinced myself I could swim ... theoretically ... I decided to follow Mom’s
suggestion about starting at the shallow end of the pool. I mimicked the
boy I’d seen swimming here the past few days.
In water that came almost to the top of my thighs, I fell forward, pushed
off with my feet and made swimming motions with my arms and legs. Eureka!
I swam a few feet. I was elated.
I had figured out how to swim.
All by myself. I fell into the
shallow water and swam again. And again.
I swam over to the middle
section of the pool, pulled up and settled down on my feet. Water lapped over my shoulders and under my
chin. I was surrounded by junior high
school boys and girls. The boys were
still trying to push the girls under, as they had been doing for three days so
far. Sure enough, no one was swimming
here. I moved away from them and tried
to swim. My observation had been swimming was impossible in four feet of water,
because no one could get their body up to the surface. So, Step 3a. of my Method wasn’t working here
in this section of the pool, and now I was beginning to understand why my legs
kept sinking, why swimming in four feet of water was impossible for humans.
I waded over to a ladder
and got out of the pool, then walked down to the deep end to watch the
kids. No one jumped in the deep end from the sides of the pool, only from
the boards. That was a big clue to
support my theory, and only later did I notice the sign forbidding such jumps
to avoid mid-air collisions with those diving from the boards.
After watching the divers
for a while, something became abundantly clear to me. Swimming must depend on
first falling forward into the water and then using your arms and legs. Down in the shallow end of the pool I was
already above the surface of the water, standing as I fell forward and
swam. In the four foot section, no one
could swim because they couldn’t fall forward and get their legs up on the
surface. Up here in the deeper section I
could jump from the diving board and then burst out of the water and ascend
high enough to fall forward and swim. It was all about starting from above the
surface! It was the diving board that
got a person that high in the deep end of the pool. Evidently, that was its purpose. From the board I’d jump high in the air,
rocket to the bottom of the pool, bounce back up with a push of the legs and
explode out of the water like a ballistic missile launched from a submarine,
high enough to fall forward and swim. I
figured no one was jumping from the side of the pool, because it didn’t provide
the momentum needed to come very far out of the water. I quickly looked down
the length of the pool to confirm this discovery. Sure enough, at that moment, one little kid
was swimming in the shallow end of the pool and no one was swimming in the 4
foot section. Kids jumped off the board
and surfaced here at the deep end and swam to the ladder. That sewed it up for me.
V. Conclusion,
Theory of Swimming: It is possible
to swim in shallow water, not possible in four feet of water, and possible in
deep water only with a diving board.
Today such faulty
thinking astounds me and I can list a number of observational and logical
mistakes almost no normal person would make, except a ten year old kid trying
to convince himself he could learn to swim without anyone’s help.
Across the pool I spotted
George. I didn’t see the other boys and
assumed they had come and gone home earlier in the morning. I wondered what he was doing here. It was hard not to like George, frankly. Except for grabbing the bat away from me, he
had never been nasty to me. He’d become
a star Little League shortstop in the past year and I was in awe of his
baseball playing ability. George was
always at the top of his league. I hoped in a few moments he’d see me swimming
fabulously across the water to the ladder and running back to the diving board
for another jump. I fervently hoped
that’s what I’d be doing, brushing aside a vision of my lifeless body carried
to a waiting ambulance.
I
headed for the diving boards, trying to not look obvious. I was sure I
had this swimming thing figured out.
“There
he is,” I said to myself in a deep announcer’s voice, “moving toward the deep
end of the pool.”
I
looked left and right, afraid someone would stop me.
“Some kids steal second base,” said the
announcer, “but this strikingly handsome young lad looks like he’s about the
steal an entire diving board! Whaddya
think Artie?”
My imaginary announcer’s sidekick was
named Artie.
“Well,
Ed, (my announcer was named Ed), the boy certainly looks fit, but a little
nervous. Still, I’ll bet he executes a perfect
swan dive.”
“That’s
right, Artie, we’re expecting this obviously well informed young man to come
off that board and slice
into the water like a sharp sword piercing the heart of a Barbary Coast pirate.”
“Well said, Ed.”
"I'm
just quoting the young man, Artie, from his interview with John Cameron
Swayze."
"That was great television, Ed."
Just as I reached
the board and was climbing on, someone called, “Hey! Stop!”
A lifeguard waved his
arms at me. “Hey! Kid! You can’t jump off the board until you show me you
can swim.”
Of course, I knew nothing
of this rule. He might want an actual demonstration. Just hearing my Theory of Swimming or The Me
Method would probably not satisfy him. And I had not brought written
copies to the pool. I didn't know where
he wanted me to prove my swimming ability, but I knew I needed the diving board
to get the momentum to swim in deep water.
Maybe he wanted me to jump from the side of the pool, but I wouldn't hit
the bottom hard enough to bounce back up and come well out of the water.
I supposed he didn't want to hear that either.
I was in a tough
spot. I edged out toward the end of the board.
“Hey!” he yelled, now
with his hands cupped around his mouth.
“I said ‘Stop,’ you little shithead!”
I’d come so far. I pictured myself flunking the swimming test
if forced to jump from the edge of the pool, pulled out by a laughing teenaged
bully as he yanked me up to safety by the hair on my head, held over the edge
of the water, dangling there for all to see and laugh at. The teenager reminded
me of an SS guard in a movie I’d just seen about Air Force guys held in a Nazi
prison camp. I had wanted to go home
only twenty minutes earlier, but now I was sure of my Theory and I intended to jump off the board and finally
swim through deep water. If I flunked the lifeguard’s test, I’d go home and
stew all week over it. What would happen to me if I had to always ask
other people to help me? It seemed so
unfair when I absolutely knew I could swim if I could only jump from the
board. And drowning seemed almost acceptable when compared to the
treatment I imagined I’d get from the lifeguard.
What the
hell.
I raced to the end of the
diving board and jumped skyward. Coming back down I touched the board
with my feet for the bounce. Getting the bounce on a diving board is a
timing trick, but I didn’t know that and I was quite lucky to hit the board
just right and rocket back up into the air like an Atlas missile on my way up
to intercept Sputnik.
For an instant in
time at the apogee of my flight. I could see beyond the pool’s fence over the
grass and walkways and into the baseball field. It was like waking up in
a bad dream. How did I get here? I decided in that split second I really liked
baseball and wanted to be over there improving my batting skills. A baseball career now seemed to make so much
sense. Probably no one had ever drowned
playing baseball. Maybe an outfielder
way back by the river, but he should have worn a life vest. Below me the Prison Guard was calling me
truly terrible names that I’m sure he could be fired for, had the town council
been aware of how he treated visiting science buffs. I dropped back toward earth and lost sight
of the baseball diamond. A bit too late
I remembered I had to somehow roll forward to accomplish the perfect dive I had
planned. I tried very hard to catch up with my falling body and turn it
into a sleek sword as it hurtled out of the sky. But my stupid ten year
old ass never got any higher than my head and I found myself in an uncontrolled
dive. The water rushed up at me as I twisted
around to face it. I slammed down like a
dead fish slapped on the cutting block at the market. A perfect belly whopper. Down at the
other end of the pool, it must have sounded like the crack of a rifle shot when
I hit the water.
In no time at all I
was on the bottom under sixteen feet of water, ablaze with pain all the way up
my front. I tried to kick off toward the surface, but I guess I was
upside down because my churning feet contacted nothing. How I got back up is a mystery, but when I
arrived at the surface I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. So I just kicked and waved and moved every
muscle in my body, as if this sheer burst of energy would levitate me out of
the pool. When I wasn't swallowing water I screamed.
There was a final awful
moment when I realized this could be it.
No one noticed me and in a short time I’d swallow more water and choke
to death. I was headed for the gates of
heaven or hell. I felt I wasn’t ready
for either at ten years old. There was
a lot of life left for me to live. I could not remember ever being as scared
before. A picture came to mind of my
father standing by the side of the pool, looking down at me and saying, “You’re too thick bodied, you’ll never
float.”
George saved my
life, in more ways than one. He reached
me before the teenaged Stalagmeister Schwimmerwacher and executed a sloppy
life-saving maneuver. He swam with one
arm out front, grabbing the water while his other arm held me in a headlock
with my face underwater. He’d have
drowned me if the pool ladder had been any farther away.
It turned out George had
come late by himself that day because of a dental appointment earlier in the morning. We became friends that evening when one of
the other boys began to bother me over my inability to swim and George stepped
in to announce he planned to teach me the next morning at the pool. He told me to come by his house to meet him
at nine. He told me there was now a
special bond between us since he had saved my life.
“OK, sure,” I said.
George and I palled around
together until the end of junior high school when my family moved out of the
neighborhood, but I saw him occasionally in high school. He was a jock and I was a nerd, but he was my
first close friend. He appreciated my
intellectual pursuits and my ability to organize projects. I was also able to correct his
misunderstanding of Reproduction. He had
something out of order, if I remember correctly. When I saw him in high school
he referred to me as his research assistant.
Without effort, George
always asked when he didn't know something.
I figured if he could do that naturally, I could somehow manage to do
the same. And when we were ten and eleven, I learned a lot from him. There was so much to ask because he knew all
these great things boys should know … how to float and how to swim, how to
crack open chestnuts, how to fold a newspaper and throw it up on a second floor
porch, how to pretend to drown a girl in the pool, how to hit a baseball
straight down the middle, how to wax up a toboggan for maximum speed … and
especially how to ask another person for help.
I never told George, but
his example of asking for help was the lesson that more than once in the future
not only enlarged my pool of experiences, but brought me closer to becoming a
member of the human race. That more than
saved my life. It made it worth saving.
Copyright 2014 by David
Griffin
