MY FIRST SWIMMING LESSON: I could've died 😒

I am not a fan of water, not one plenty enough to swallow me anyways but it's almost customary that we all learn and know how to swim because your ability to navigate in the water could one day be the difference between life and death and also because it's fun and a good form of exercise too. This right here is the story of my first swimming lesson.

It was my girlfriend's birthday the next week and she had been psyched about it for days now and kept asking me over and over what we were gonna do for her birthday. She wanted something different.

This particular day I had an answer for her and I told her I would like for us to go away, somewhere nice and quiet where we could have fun. Immediately she asked if we could go swimming. I didn't know how to swim, infact prior to that question I had never, ever gotten into any water body whatsoever before so I felt ok, maybe this is the perfect opportunity for me to try it out so I said yes and then she asked the all important question, which was if I knew how to swim, my answer naturally should've been no but at that moment i just felt so uncool like I wasn't a real man if I admitted to it so I said yes, yeah, I know, I lied. She was happy and confident because she couldn't swim and was hoping I could, that way she would feel safer with me close to her in the water.

The all important day came, we were out of town and in a hotel and had gone to see a movie the night before; Real Steel. In the morning we had breakfast by 9am after which she got her birthday gift, I did good 😊 then she felt it was time to go swimming and frankly I had been avoiding that all day. We got to the hotel pool which had a few people in it, say five and the instructor/life guard was standing by. She wore the cutest of bathing suits and for a moment I just wish we weren't so far from the room 😒 then I remembered that I couldn't be thinking of that right now because I was in front of an 8 ft pool and she thinks I know how to swim 😧. We were standing by the edge and she looked at me like "you gonna show me how it's done?" Oh boy, I didn't know what to do, and yes again I could've just told her that I couldn't swim, it was no big deal, yet, I didn't. I was scared and yet what preceded was by no means fearful, infact it was the exact opposite; an act of bravery and borderline stupid, I jumped, no, I dived. That was my first time ever of entering water and I dived like I was Michael Phelps, I soon realized I though that i wasn't. I landed in the water like a big log of wood with no idea what to do next, I began to panic and struggle and I thought to myself "this is it man, you're gonna die here, you and your stupid pride" just when I thought I was done it came to me "let go" I did and I floated up and soon my head was above the water, I forcefully swam to the little three-step ladder by the side and climbed out, drenched in my shame.

As soon as I was out I heard people laughing, I knew for sure they were laughing at me, then the life guard walked up to me also laughing said

"C'mon man that wasn't so cool, just cos she's afraid to get into the water doesn't mean you have to rub it in her face"

Then it dawned on me, these people were laughing at her because they felt I acted that way in the water just to tease her. I just almost died and these people thought I was trying to be funny. It was an easier way out of course so I pretended to laugh too. I went to her and told her it was ok and she was safe and of course I handed her over to the instructor. I went to the changing room and got into my shorts and a shirt and sat by the pool cos frankly I wasn't going anywhere near that water again.

I soon became a good swimmer a few months after though but I can never forget my first self taught swimming lesson.