A LEARNING EXPERIENCE

In Oklahoma our land was adjacent to a gravel pit. The pit was usually dry. However, I remember once, after an exceptionally heavy rainfall, even the deepest pit filled with water and our whole family went swimming. Most of us didn’t know how to swim but enjoyed playing in the water. We didn’t have swimsuits. The boys wore their underwear but we girls had to wear old dresses that were pinned with a safety pin between our legs.
 

Anyway, that was the only swimming experience I remember before I was eight years old.

In 1942, when we lived in Blackburn’s Camp in California Betty, the girl next door, was dating a soldier named Jim. They were going swimming in an irrigation canal and asked me to go along. I’ve since wondered why and think possibly Betty wasn’t all that comfortable with Jim and I was a kind of chaperone. 

 

Jim wore his swimsuit under his uniform and Betty had hers on under her dress. Me? I wore a dress pinned between my legs.

As soon as Jim stopped the car I bounded out of the back seat, went racing to the canal and jumped in. The canal was deep. I never touched bottom but came sputtering to the top. Thrashing, scared, panicked I went under again and came up again.

Jim took time only to shed his shoes before jumping in after me. That picture has remained frozen in my mind—Jim’s upraised foot and his hands pushing a still-tied shoe off just before I went under for the third time. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I had been so stupid. Jim is still my hero. I can’t remember, did I ever thank him properly?

Betty and Jim never again asked me to go anywhere with them and I‘ve never wondered why.

Rachel Nemitz, August 2010