Water, Water, Everywhere…And Me No Drop, I Think

When I was just a small pipsqueak of a lad, I suffered from a great confusion: why was it that my dad didn’t like going into the water as much as I did? My feeling was that life, especially life in summer, was nothing unless it included frolicking in some body of water. Now, I’m perhaps a bigger fuddy-duddy when it comes to dihydrogen monoxide than he was.

Finding a swimming pool used to be bliss. Leaving the pool, or lake, or ocean, was worse than someone stealing food from me–and that’s saying something. I’d take hideously long baths so I could practice holding my breath in anticipation of the next time I got to have aquatic adventure.

It all started going south for me when I was eight-ish. Several rounds of swimming lessons left me with more confidence in the water, but also less joy. While it was bad enough that the joy was becoming work (for a kid, classes in anything can seem like work), but the expectation of us doing a celebratory dive from the 3-meter (10-foot) board was too much. I was less nervous about the deep end of the pool than I was about the height (I’ve always loathed heights), but it set up the association that water wasn’t fun.

Even so, I still swam when I could. My parents set up a above-ground pool for me so that I could spend hours each day in the water, if I wanted. As can easily be guessed by anyone who has swum a lot, I started getting ear infections. Many ear infections. Painful, not-at-all-fun, ear infections in both ears.

I wasn’t really aware of my ear infection legacy until a few years later. We had moved from Southern California, you see, to Maryland, and I no longer had that access to pools that I did. When we did finally go on a vacation, the siren song of the hotel pool was all but impossible to ignore. Also impossible to ignore was the ear-ache I got almost immediately after. Over the years, the effect became even worse. Water, ear-plugs, wind, even cold air would activate my ears’ desires to be left alone.

Fast-forward to early fall 1979. I’m having to go to classes at college while the remnants of hurricane David deluged everything that ventured outside. No sort of protection helped. All you could do was get soaked. If you had classes in the basement levels of buildings, you waded while in class. Everything and everyone got saturated with water, and the smell of mildew lasted well over a year in some places. While we all seemed to enjoy the bonding experience about having to endure this natural “inconvenience”, the fact is that ever since then I have not thought of being wet as an enjoyable experience.

This acquired loathing of water usually isn’t a problem, but it does at times get in the way. People do invite me to events where social dampness is an expectation. When you combine the above acquired antipathy toward watery experience, plus my lousy body image from as long as I was old enough to care about such things (regardless of the reality of the time), and the issue is ripe for conflict.

As you might well guess, the Scotts* have a different view of water than I. They like water park attractions, swimming pools, and other moisture-filled bonding social adventures. Understandably, they want me to join them with equal enthusiasm. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Mary tried to entice me to visit with offerings of hot tubs and swimming pools. I, with a huge heaviness in my heart, had to excuse myself from consideration (not from the visit…just the water-filled diversions). Even love isn’t enough to make me participate in festivals of hydroxyl acid. In all honesty, I’d rather get kicked in the leg by a horse…it’s much less onerous and a lot more fun.

So, there it is. As the years have passed, I’ve become oil. Water and I no longer mix. I’ve stopped fighting it. The only common activity that involves water that I engage in is hygiene. As I don’t take baths, opting instead for showers (surprise, surprise), it’s endurable. Not that I enjoy getting wet in either case, but somehow with the shower being like rain, instead of the pool-like bath, it isn’t much of a problem.

It’s funny how the accumulated events in a life can build to have this sort of effect. It really is fascinating to me–and, it’s great fodder for human foibles when I write. I can only hope that the Scotts and others with similar hydrophilic proclivities come to understand that there are just some things I don’t do any more. Not out of malice, but personal psyche protection. We all have these sorts of walls that none will breech. The trick, I think, is figuring out how all of our walls can fit together to form a solid structure.

Or maybe it’s just as simple as some people like getting wet, and some would rather stay dry and hand out the towels. I’ll leave that to minds smarter than mine to figure out.