The world can be brutal to those few, like me, who have a head that is heavier than his feet. I’m among the estimated three percent of the world’s population suffering from this malady.
After years of wondering why would cause such a problem, I wondered each summer as I continued to somersault at the first introduction to water. We narrowed down the problem to an inability to float. Yes, I bob like a cork for a minute or two and then– wham, I find my head changing places with my feet and, inevitably, my head hits the bottom as my feet are thrashing around trying to right my body.
As a result, too, I have an inability to swim.
I first discovered this as a child when my parents sent me off, with my brother Steve to the municipal swimming pool in Lusk for swimming lessons. The instructor (Al Taylor, a high school student, and later, a justice on the Wyoming Supreme Court) succeeded in getting all but me to float. Steve took to it naturally, but was very embarrassed when his younger brother had to be fished out at the start of the exercise. I sat poolside spitting water as the lesson continued, an object of pity or scorn by the other dozen students,
“Did you see him go down?” one marveled. “Head hit the bottom and the water was only four feet deep,” another interjected.
I swallowed lots of water but, each time, someone was there to drag me out. I tried; everyone finally gave up. I remember the summer when we were living in Cody, and my mother, having never given up on her goal to make me a swimmer, watched as I ignominiously humiliated the family by nearly drowning in the “kiddie pool” where the water was just up to my thigh.
Wyoming, however, was an easy place to avoid water. It was arid enough that no one thought of swimming when every drop could enliven fly fishing.
But then the unthinkable happened. I was drafted into the Marine Corps! And boot camp success included the ability to swim–or , at least, to float! It was getting tiresome every couple of weeks to try convincing a DI that the objective was an impossibility. They fished me out and pumped out the water after the first two pool trips. I wanted to award a lifesaving badge to the guy who angered the rest of the platoon by pooping in the water and forcing DIs to abort the exercise.
After that, when I became permanent party as I waited with everyone else for the inevitable orders or quota call for Vietnam, we periodically were ordered to “swim school” at Coronado or the rifle range at Camp Pendleton. Everyone fought to go to Coronado where one could spend lots of time basking in the sun on the beach when he wasn’t on duty. As for me, I objected mightily to being sent to the rifle range, knowing my objection would be tantamount to getting sent to the rifle range. I never got sent to swim school.
Many years later after the military and success at not drowning, my wife and brother Steve decided one day that they could teach me to swim–in the pool at Steve’s Tucson apartment on Alvernon Street. Fortunately, it had a shallow side–reaching nearly to my knees! “Shouldn’t be a problem,” they tried to assure me. I’m still spitting up the water from that fiasco as both laid down on the job and watched me sink. In defense, they both said, “How could anyone go down in such shallow water?”
The experts say the West will be in drought for a while. Maybe the water will be in such tight supply that swimming will be made illegal. For a guy who’s head is heavier than his feet, it will be a lifesaver!