Child Abuse

In the course of emailing a friend with small children yesterday, I meandered onto the topic of swimming lessons.  My friend has a toddler and a baby and I was thinking about my old swimming instructor who used to toss her baby into the swimming pool at the Boys and Girls Club.  The baby would float and paddle, and was better at moving inside the pool than she was at walking outside of it.  I saw my instructor heave her baby into the pool many times, but the shock of the act was not diminished upon repeated viewings.  In my memories, she LAUNCHED the baby into the pool, but looking back I realize it was probably more like this.  Regardless, this swimming technique did not inspire the title of today's post.  The horrors that the Dude and I experienced while taking swimming lessons were, I submit, the real child abuse.

Our parents signed us up for swimming lessons because of the supposed health benefits to young asthmatics.  We started in the smaller, heated pool with the baby-tossing instructor.  I can clearly picture our instructor, but I can't recall her name.  Let's call her Barbara.  The thing about Barbara that none of her former students will ever forget is that she had a huge, unruly, black bush that could not be contained by her bathing suits.  Week after week, the novice swimmers of Central Maine were co-taught by Barbara's bush.  Although these lessons occurred in the late '80s, perhaps an era before fastidious personal landscaping was the norm, I feel confident that Barbara flouts modern trends and still rocks a natural and abundant bush.

On top of the public display of pubes during each lesson, we were then forced to shower in the locker rooms.  I believe The Dude was excused from showering because our mum couldn't go into the men's locker room with him.  I was not so lucky, though I will admit my mother made sure I was covered and afforded privacy while showering and changing.  Not all young ladies were concerned with modesty.  One girl a little older than me and a few sandwiches short of a picnic used to change right in front of the door to the locker room, exposing herself to the hallway as people entered and exited.  She was my first illustration of early puberty, and probably The Dude's as well since he was always standing right outside the door, and I was highly disturbed by what I saw.  Unfortunately the scene in the hallway was often far more upsetting.

I am not proud to admit this.  I know talking about it paints me in a very unflattering, though completely accurate, light.  Some Saturdays after our swimming lessons wrapped up, a group of special needs adults would be waiting in the hallway.  I suppose they had their own pool time scheduled for later in the day, though I can't remember ever seeing them in swimsuits or actually in the pool area.  This group was severely mentally, and in some cases physically, disabled.  One of the men had a disfigured face.  Some of his features were enlarged, including part of his lip and a giant tongue that always hung out of his mouth.  I was absolutely terrified of this group.  I either told my mother how I felt or she had functioning eyes and saw my fear, and subsequently I was on the receiving end of a talk about everyone being different and how we should be accepting and kind.  So when someone from the special needs group would talk to me or maybe even reach out and touch me, I would try to respond in an appropriate way rather than peeing my pants, as I was inclined to do.  These brief hallway encounters did a number on me.  Even as an adult, driving by the abandoned Boys and Girls Club building causes a feeling of dread to wash over me.

After several years, my parents finally allowed us to stop taking swimming lessons.  Their goal had been to strengthen our lungs, but here's what I really took away from those lessons:  some unwanted knowledge about human biology, nightmares, and Plantar warts.  Thanks, Mum and Dad.