I was happy to go to church his week. After worship, Pastor opened up the congregation to prayer. He began prophesying over various congregation members. Then his wife began to prophesy to someone. She is blessed and inspiring in her spiritual strength. I was happy, as I always am, to hear her join her husband in prayer. Mrs. Pastor began telling someone about a large body of water, prefacing her words with, “I don’t swim so I stay away from the water. . .”

I was taken aback. I know, it’s a pet peeve of mine. I’m such a swim geek, I want everyone to be one. And I could look at swimming as optional, as a simple sport preference and go on my way. But I don’t look at swimming that way. It is a life skill. What you don’t know about swimming can kill you. Is that really a good life strategy? To stay away from the water because you can’t swim?

That would influence where you live. You couldn’t live in a flood plane, certainly. A big storm could suddenly turn deadly. An island would be out. So would the West Coast, East Coast, or Gulf Coast. Michigan? I guess you could live inland in Michigan, but don’t find yourself at one of the thousands of lakes. . .

I get that the longer you’ve been a non-swimmer, the greater amount of fear you’ve got to overcome. What I don’t get is the decision to live with that fear rather than learn how to swim. Let me make myself clear. I have utmost respect for Mrs. Pastor. I have a problem with her remark, which I found distracting and careless. I am really going after the thinking behind the remark, not the wonderful woman of God who made the remark.

Mrs. Pastor is not the only black person I’ve heard this from. It’s more the norm than the exception in our community, isn’t it? I guess the huge Black drowning rate shouldn’t be too surprising, then.

Not knowing how to swim is one thing. Bragging or joking about it is another. I wanted to email Mrs. Pastor about how distracting and careless her remark was. I wanted to spread swimming fever throughout the church. . . but I just wrote a note about how I couldn’t believe (!) and went on listening to the service. And life goes on. Mrs. Pastor is no closer to becoming a swimmer, while I quietly simmer in cyberspace.

Is it me? Or do you sit silent while others brag about their lack of swimming skills?

The Y where my daughter works is smaller than the Y where I usually swim. I’ll call them her Y and my Y here. At my Y, there are two pools and a hot tub. The large pool is heavily scheduled. You must check the schedule carefully before planning a trip to the Y to do your lap swimming. Or you might get there during a water aerobics class, open swim, or swim team practice.

At her Y, you know that there is usually a lane available for lap swimming; open swims are longer and more often. I did my swimming at her Y this week. It was interesting. On Wednesday, I swam while my 9 year old took her tennis lesson. The whole pool was dedicated to lap swimming during that hour, and it was full when I got there. By the time I left, the pool was deserted.

Yesterday, I swam while my daughter taught her swim classes. So the pool had swim lessons at both walls with lap lanes in the middle. When I started, there were three lap lanes. In the middle of my set, my daughter’s boss eliminated the lap lane to my right, expanding the area where my daughter was teaching. She threatened to make me share a lane with the man swimming to my left, but that wasn’t necessary.

I remembered how self-conscious I used to be in the pool. When I first started swimming, I had been so paranoid that someone was going to kick me out for being a bad swimmer. Like anybody was even paying attention to me. There’s nothing like swimming in a pool where they’re doing lessons to get you over yourself. At one point, I was swimming to the deep end and saw a flash. Was it raining, I wondered. I was swimming towards a window, but the flash was behind me. It occurred to me that it was a camera flash. There was a large class of babies with parents in the pool. Most of the parents in the water were fathers, and all of the people with cameras were mothers. Now I know why you are not to take flash photos during swim meets. It is very distracting. The baby swim class had songs. I remembered some from way back when I took my 18 year old daughter to Mommy and Me swim class. She was 2 1/2.

My daughter’s classes had lots of little kids with cubes. They all sat on the wall and sang softly to each other while awaiting their turn. I looked out on the lobby and pool deck at all the proud parents while catching my breath. I really enjoyed sharing the pool with all these little people. I jumped out just before the children left the pool, making room for the next lesson session. I got out of the shower just in time to meet the wave of babies getting dressed. I mentally kicked myself for bad timing, let the mothers and babies go first, and enjoyed listening to the young talkers.

I think I’ll swim at her Y again soon.