My first experiences swimming are some of the most awkward and traumatic moments in my life. I didn’t realize this until I interviewed a young woman from Flint, Mich., who launched a program encouraging more Black children to learn how to swim.
Charlie Dobson, who launched We Swim Aquatics LLC. in the Flint area, said many of the adults she teaches had experienced trauma related to swimming.
“They are adults who were traumatized at a young age,” she said of some of her clients. “For whatever reason, they never learned how to swim.”
Though my experience was embedded in trauma, I did learn how to swim.
Growing up, we didn’t frequent beaches or pools. Mama didn’t ever talk about swimming, so it really didn’t have a place in my life.
I learned to swim in the early 90s. Gym was my first hour as a high school freshman. Prior to high school, I never really thought about swimming. My water playdates with baths wouldn’t measure up to a gym teacher telling me to pass his class, I would have to swim from one end of a high school pool to the other.
There I was, standing awkwardly on the side of a swimming pool in a bathing suit in front of boys I had never met. Yep, that’s it—one of the most humiliating moments of my life. Not to mention how water laced with chlorine would seep into my swimming cap, leaving my hair a hot mess during that marketing period.
There was simply nothing a middle-aged white man teaching at the gym could tell young Black girls about their hair. No one thought about mannish and hormone raging teenagers who were barely being supervised at a swimming pool and what that really meant. Girls were being harassed, boys were dunking each other without the ability to save themselves if they were drowning and what I now consider a lawsuit waiting to happen. It didn’t happen, and we survived. Years later, a young man would drown in the pool calling the district to give up on swimming entirely and use the pool to store old furniture.
I actually felt like I lost something. It’s strange. I didn’t feel like I had any control of my level of exposure. I felt naked literally and figuratively. It didn’t have to be that way.
The whole experience was traumatic for me. So traumatic that when I looked at my daughter’s freshman schedule, and she had gym her first marking period, I had her counselor change her schedule, and they weren’t even swimming. That requirement is now long gone from high school curriculums in the area.
I’m going to revisit this trauma. Maybe I will try swimming again. Dobson also said that some of her adult clients learn how to swim for health reasons.
That might definitely be a win.
(Notes from a Black Girl is only offered to our premium subscribers. The column features commentary and behind the scenes stories, videos and images from my journey of self discovery as I travel across the country telling stories and sharing experiences.)