beth_castroll
Contributor
I can remember childhood pets of goldfish swimming in various bowls on the nightstand next to my bed. I remember longingly looking into bowls personifying thoughts of friendship between me and my fishes. Starved for interaction I would rap upon the bowl.
Here fishy, fishy, fishy But never did my fishy friend oblige my calling, so inevitably I would stick my hand into the bowl grasping for the poor creature and then ripping it from its Zen-like harmony in the bowl out into the deathly air where it would flop and flip gasping for breath. I would spend several seconds petting the fish before thrusting my hand back into the bowl and freeing the fish. Often the periled Carassius auratus would swim sideways as if drunk, round and round the bowl, until either it recovered to live another day or to float belly up and end up in the big flush.
Yesterday I began my life aquatic.
I can remember kicking hard, bobbing up, taking in a deep breath before plunging myself into the pool and exhaling my life into the Buoyancy Compensator. Up and down, bobbing and blowing, hoping not to swim sideways or belly up. Good! Now back to the blackline, my dive instructor directed, but all I could think of was that poor fish out of water and how I had become a human in water trying to breath as just as desperately as my fish from long ago.
Learning to dive has been a life long desire for me and taking that first class yesterday was a small step in that goal. We swam 250 meters to prove we could. We trod water for 10 minutes. We did the divers wiggle and encased our skin in neoprene. We practiced diving under the water with our snorkels in mouth, only to spit them out at the surface to quickly bob and fill our BCs.
I take great personal satisfaction in trying my hand at this endeavor. I see many challenges to over come as a plus size diver from poorly fitting dive suits and BCs that require extra cummerbunds to not having the physical stamina as someone else who is in better conditioning, or to those nasty *** leg cramps that have left my calves screaming for mercy this morning but all in all I have to give myself a few props for doing what many fear and to keep reminding myself that no one learns to dive in their first lesson.
Heres to my future life aquatic and the hopes to never feel like a human in water.
Here fishy, fishy, fishy But never did my fishy friend oblige my calling, so inevitably I would stick my hand into the bowl grasping for the poor creature and then ripping it from its Zen-like harmony in the bowl out into the deathly air where it would flop and flip gasping for breath. I would spend several seconds petting the fish before thrusting my hand back into the bowl and freeing the fish. Often the periled Carassius auratus would swim sideways as if drunk, round and round the bowl, until either it recovered to live another day or to float belly up and end up in the big flush.
Yesterday I began my life aquatic.
I can remember kicking hard, bobbing up, taking in a deep breath before plunging myself into the pool and exhaling my life into the Buoyancy Compensator. Up and down, bobbing and blowing, hoping not to swim sideways or belly up. Good! Now back to the blackline, my dive instructor directed, but all I could think of was that poor fish out of water and how I had become a human in water trying to breath as just as desperately as my fish from long ago.
Learning to dive has been a life long desire for me and taking that first class yesterday was a small step in that goal. We swam 250 meters to prove we could. We trod water for 10 minutes. We did the divers wiggle and encased our skin in neoprene. We practiced diving under the water with our snorkels in mouth, only to spit them out at the surface to quickly bob and fill our BCs.
I take great personal satisfaction in trying my hand at this endeavor. I see many challenges to over come as a plus size diver from poorly fitting dive suits and BCs that require extra cummerbunds to not having the physical stamina as someone else who is in better conditioning, or to those nasty *** leg cramps that have left my calves screaming for mercy this morning but all in all I have to give myself a few props for doing what many fear and to keep reminding myself that no one learns to dive in their first lesson.
Heres to my future life aquatic and the hopes to never feel like a human in water.
