Learning to Swim

I saw this thing on TV about teaching babies how to swim. They kinda threw them in and let them fend for themselves. Of course, the parents were standing by so there wasn't any real danger there. When we were kids we had to learn on our own. I only knew one kid whose daddy threw him in the lake and made him swim out. This particular daddy was one that mistreated all the family members and one day he just disappeared. Nobody ever knew what happened, but a lot of folks suspected the daddy of his wife, who was known for taking the law in his own hands in several situations. But that's not what I want to talk about. Back in those days there wasn't a swimming pool within a hundred miles of Harper. We went to swimming holes. I can name about twenty such places in our county. We had Harper Lake but it sat still and the water tended to be warmer than we liked on a hot summer day. My favorite swimming hole, the one where I learned to swim, was called Passion Pool. Apparently it was used for swimming and picnics during the daylight and for something else after dark. Peer pressure was what taught me how to swim. When my friends could swim across (about twenty feet) I felt it necessary to do the same thing. I don't know how close I came to drowning, but I must have gone under at least ten times before I got the rhythm necessary to swim the rest of the way. Then I had to swim back. I don't think I went under but five times on that trip. Keeping face is a powerful thing. Some people would rather die than lose that battle. I reckon I was one of them.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle