So today's our last day here in Orlando. The weather yesterday was kind of odd - cloudy and we had one torrential downpour in the afternoon that lasted three minutes. Luckily, my friend and I had the kids in the Playhouse Disney show so the guys (who deemed themselves too manly to sit through JoJo's Circus) got soaking wet.
We hit MGM Studios yesterday and had a pretty good day. The kids seem to really like that park the best (probably the most character interactions with characters they like and aren't all princesses) but I personally was ready to go by around 2 PM. Part of it was just the lack of things I wanted to do, but the other part is that although I love our friends, they are aggravating as crap to travel with. I feel like 90% of our day is waiting on them to finally get their acts together so we can DO SOMETHING. Now, I'm not a Disney Nazi in the sense that I feel like we have to go from sunup to sundown, but I do like to get there early in the day so that we can get out of there at a decent time. They, however, like to roll into the park later on in the day and stay there until the park closes. So this, my friends, is the rub - Monkey Man adores their son (why, I don't know because he is a mean little shit) so if we're not all up their butts, we get the constant "where are they" all day long. ARGH.
Anyhow, to my post title. G-Man had asked the other day if I could swim.
Why yes, G-Man, I can swim.
Can I swim well, though? As in well enough to haul a non-swimming 50-pound piece of dead weight around an eight-foot deep lazy river? Nope.
I can swim, but I'm not a strong swimmer. I took swimming lessons starting at the age of six - probably too late in the grand scheme of things, and then when I was seven I almost drowned in the pool during a group swimming lesson. Yeah, I got skillz.
So that experience instilled a healthy respect for water in me. If I can't touch the bottom, I need to be close to something to grab on to. This presents a problem when you want to do cool things like snorkel in Jamaica, but once I discovered the lovely little foam vest thingies they have I embraced it and decided to throw vanity to the wind and actually enjoy myself. Yeah, I look like a big fat dork, but I'd rather look like a dork than drown and have my epitaph say, "She looked great but was too fucking stupid to wear a life vest."
So Discovery Cove, where we went on Sunday, has this very cool lazy river that is heated and goes through an aviary. Monkey Man loves going through there, but he has even poorer swimming skills than I do (as in NONE) so since the water gets up to eight feet deep, I elected to put the vest on myself and him so I could haul his ass around there.
The big news, though - we actually got him to do the dog-paddle. He was hilariously proud of himself. Not to mention I'm glad to have passed along my dog-paddling skills.
So, that's the story. Just another one of the freaky things about me - like my fear of escalators, fear of heights, and fear of fire. I'm just a pillar of confidence, aren't I?
2 comments:
i didn't learn to swim until i was probably 12. i come from a long line of women who are afraid of water (and drunk white trash, but that's another comment), so because my mom was terrified of water, so was i. then my parents put in a 3' deep above-ground pool in our yard when i was 10 or 11. my dad taught me to swim (mostly by bullying me into getting my head under water) and i've since swam in lakes and rivers and ponds and even snorkeled the palancar reef--but i am still somewhat afraid of water. i can't dive, and the only thing keeping me from scuba classes (besides living in missouri) is the fact going backwards off a boat scares the piss outta me.
Well there I have it then. Laughed out loud at your epitaph. I have a thing for rushing water, turns my stomach into a knot.
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