On my last post, I mentioned the embarrassment that was the black chef on Extreme Chefs. I hadn’t seen the worst yet. When the show ran again hours later, I saw how the eager brother ran to the lake, beat the other two chefs to the punch, and dove in. He proceeded to go nowhere fast, but down. Blaming the seaweed and the fact that he was wearing clothes, the chef floundered in the same place for a minute, before lifeguards on the scene dove in to rescue him.

The black chef was then given a time penalty of 5 minutes after the last chef finished the aquatic challenge.

And the rest happened as I reported earlier.

Same moral. When it comes to swimming, what you don’t know can hurt you. Or kill you.
That is all.

It does seem like a stretch for Food Network to combine Survivor and Chopped, but hey, why not? I was happy to give it a try.

When I tuned in, three chefs had to swim out to a spot in the cold body of water, catch a fish, (which had already been trapped for them), and then get in a boat and row back to a cooking station.

While the two non-black chefs gamely dove in and tried their hand at the aquatic challenge, the black chef chose to stay on shore and add 5 minutes to his cooking time.

If he couldn’t swim, that was a wise choice. But could not knowing how to swim ruin his chances at winning Extreme Chefs, thereby limiting his career? Time will tell. He did lose the cooking challenge after the aquatic event.

What you don’t know about swimming can hurt you.

Edited to add: Chef Jerome, the black chef ended up coming in second. It likely had less to do with swimming than cooking, but swimming could have given him an edge.

My mother’s birthday was in June. She passed 5 years ago, but her memory looms strong in the summer. She had an unusual relationship to swimming.

She and my father were Peace Corps volunteers in the mid 60s. A swimming test was part of the entrance exam. My parents were a typical black couple–non-swimmers. My mother learned the back stroke for the Peace Corps. The only stroke she ever learned was the back stroke. She wore a nose plug when she swam, and she kicked dainty little splash free kicks.

My mother loved the water, the beach, and, especially, Esther Williams movies. When she got older, my mother took water aerobics.

I am sure my mother’s attitude towards the water contributed to my brother and my love of swimming.

You don’t have to become a swim star to instill a love of water in your children.