Back Dive

When I was five, my mother sent me to swimming lessons at the local high school because she believed that in our rural town the leading cause of death for five-year-olds was slipping into the ditch.  

I took to swimming lessons as I did to all lessons; I was precocious, talented, compliant, and eager to excel. I liked the heraldic hierarchy of swimming lessons, and quickly moved from minnow to sunfish to trout.

For all this adherence to instruction and what-was-expected, it must have shocked my instructor Joanie when I refused to do a backwards dive off the low board.

She had us doing all the dives by then: standing and racing dives from the pool edge, then the same from the low board. The day came when Joanie showed me and the other kids how to stand with our heels hanging, lean back, kick away, and land in the water in a perfect back dive.  

I watched Joanie do it. I watched my classmates. When it was my turn I walked to the end of the board, turned around, and didn't do any dive. I could not, I would not, dive backwards off that board; I knew it as sure as I knew the rules for "Crazy-8." I was afraid, as simple as that.  

Joanie came out to the end of the board and offered me encouragement. I stood there with hanging heels, and she squatted in front of me. I hung my head. She told me gently there was nothing to be afraid of. I raised my eyes to argue and stopped at her breasts. My body warmed and every droplet of fear evaporated.  

She was wearing a hot-pink bikini; this was 1966. Her breasts were like grapefruits. Her bikini top pushed her breasts together into a deep furrow. The seams of her suit did not obscure her rising nipples, grown stiff as Joanie cooled off in the morning sun.  

I kept my eyes down. Joanie was coaxing me. The other kids had done it. I didn't have to do it, but there was no reason why I shouldn't. She would spot me. She would hold my hips as I bent back, and not let go until I was ready.  

She was convincing. I probably could do the dive if she did that. But if I dove backwards, I couldn't look at her breasts, here they were, just inches away. I nodded encouragement to her so she would keep trying. She continued to coax me. I straightened my spine so I wouldn't press my cheeks to her breasts. My eyes could not leave off exploring the mysteries under her bathing suit. I wasn't going to dive and fear had nothing to do with it. She was going to keep trying to get me to dive and I was going to keeping looking at her breasts. I stood there in perfect contentment; her gentle words and my little murmurs existed only to keep her near me; time, as they say, stood still.  

Joanie eventually gave up; I returned with her to the end of the board, without shame or ridicule. The next kid dove off, and I kept the memory of her breasts with me from that moment through the rest of my life. Eight years later I finally was able to touch a girl's breasts and put her nipples in my mouth. I have never done a back dive.  

I'm all grown up now, and less compliant. Out there on the diving board, I learned a lesson my mother didn't intend. It saved my life.