Fair Weather Swimmer

One thing the reader will learn about this blog of mine, is that it will not be chronological. It won't start with my birth then slog through my infancy and then toddlerhood into my childhood etc. I will jump around a lot. Memories are what it's all about.

Los Banos was an excellent place to grow up in. I know that by the time I hit junior high and then high school, I hated it and couldn't wait to get out but now that I've 'been out' for quite some time now, I'd love to go back even though that saying 'you can't go home again' rears it's ugly head.

Summer time in my youth was a special time. As soon as school let out in mid June and was three months of play, or so I thought. Forget the exact age I was when my mother insisted that I needed swimming lessons. I wasn't really against it but when I say I'm a 'fair weather swimmer' I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I do not like cold pools. The public pool was about six blocks from my house and my lessons were at some horrible early hour, like 8 am or some nonsense like that. The pool was cold and I was cold at that time of the day. Now don't get me wrong, Los Banos isn't one of those California towns that doesn't have hot summers, quite the opposite but at 8 am, well, it's just not hot enough for me to actually want to be in the water.

After probably a six week swim course, I was good to go. We didn't have a pool at our house although that wasn't from the lack of asking 'dad, can we get a pool?' repeated daily for several years after completing the lessons. Even though we didn't have a pool, there were a few pools in the neighborhood and boy did I love that option! But again, the 'fair weather swimming' comes into play. The pool that belonged to the neighbors directly across from us, well it was nice, a pretty kidney bean shape if my memory is correct but that thing was COLD! I only recall swimming in it one time and that was enough. There were two Adrian families in the neighborhood, the aforementioned Cindy and Debi and then their aunt and uncle's house that was on the next block. I did most of my swimming in those days at Cindy and Debi's but occasionally their mom would want to go visit their aunt and uncle and I would already be at their house so I'd tag along and swim in the other Adrian pool. Now I don't know what the secret was back then, but both Adrian pools were the optimum temperature for this fair weather swimmer.

Now as an adult, I have swam in many pools that probably do exceed both the Adrian's but I highly doubt I've enjoyed those swims as much as I did back then.