My nieces had never seen the movie Splash, with Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. So tonight we rented it. I guess somewhere I’d forgotten how much I loved it because when I was little, I saw it right before I was first enrolled in swim lessons, and was under the firm impression that once I got wet, I would grow a tail.
The first day of swim lessons I went to the shallow end of the pool. Evidently, it didn’t matter that I came from a long family history of swimmers, or that I had been in the pool a hundred times before and I’d never grown a tail – somehow, after seeing the movie I was convinced that I would have no troubles becoming a Mermaid, that day. The teacher started us off with safety on the deck, and other steps I considered a childish waste of time. Finally, when it was time to step down the ladder and hold the wall – I decided – now was my chance to show I wasn’t a beginner, I was in fact a Mermaid. I leaped off the wall and into the shallow end (where I could stand on my tip toes if I had to), I must have flailed a little, I don’t remember, only being grasped by my upper arm and lectured severely about following instructions like all the other good kids.
The greatest disappointment of the day was the eventual awareness, that I would not grow a tail. I did the stupid bubble-blowing exercises, and the breath holding and everything else required because I learned it all from my older siblings. They graduated me that day two levels up and despite how cool all the other kids seemed to think this was – I went home a little disillusioned. No tail. No grand transformation into a mermaid. No fabulous world under the water waiting to claim me and take me away. I was just a little girl.
I don’t recall it getting me down for long. I vaguely remember days of fantasy and role playing where I’d entertain myself for hours by rolling my legs in a blanket and flopping around on the floor of the basement like a landed fish. Eventually, I discovered through swimming that I had a pretty strong dolphin kick and a love of staying under as long as I could where the sounds of life, the touch and feel and smell of living was separated from awareness – then something magical happened. I’m not sure when it started, because I believe I always had the urge to tell stories, to develop fantasy worlds and build in make believe, but somewhere in the next two years of swim lessons I started to write stories in my mind while I did laps.
Perhaps it’s the repetition, or the sensory disruption – but as I was entered on to the junior leagues I let my mind go places where I actually WAS a mermaid while I swam. I was also a dragon, a tiger rider, a warrior woman and a tamer of lost wild creatures. Then suddenly, before I knew it, practice was over and I’d be exhausted. I drag myself out of the pool and scrub the itchy stink of chlorine off the best I could in the shower and feel a sense of loss that my worlds were not accessible. As I’d walk out to the car in the freezing cold, my hair would turn to brittle strands of curl and I’d remember – I might have to go home and pretend to be whatever was expected of me, but THAT was the real fantasy, because tomorrow between 5-7 pm, I could be myself – even if no one else could see it.
What movies or stories inspired you when you were young?
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