Steve Mentz

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THALASSOLOGY, SHAKESPEARE, AND SWIMMING

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Learning to Swim

December 7, 2010 by Steve Mentz 2 Comments

He was probably in his mid-fifties, ramrod thin, with a flash of gray in his dark hair.  His mouth sometimes pulled down to one side, as if caught between a smile and a frown.  He wore the same black bathing suit every time I saw him come to the pool.  I never learned his name.

He told me a little bit of his story one day.  He’d had an accident in the water when he was a boy, about the same age as my kids, who were at the pool that summer to take swimming lessons of their own.  “I almost drowned,” he said, with that pulled-down grimace of a smile.  “And since then I’ve been terrified of the water.”  Now, as an adult, he’d signed up for a summer of private lessons.

We watched him, trying not to stare.  His body froze underwater, muscles clenching & straining & grabbing at nothing.  He wore a full set of water wings & floaties, and his arms and legs churned aimlessly.

He got better, slowly.  At the end of the summer —  during which time Olivia learned to put her face in the water & Ian learned rotary breathing for his crawl stroke — he could support himself w/o floaties.  Eventually he swam, by himself, across the deep end of the pool, maybe 15 feet or so, in 12′ deep water.  I’ve seldom seem anyone so triumphant, or so scared.

I think of this story a lot at the end of the semester.  Learning is painful,  risky, and dangerous — sometimes we teachers forget that.  You have to put yourself in an untenable position — in the destructive element immerse, to borrow Conrad’s language — to make real education possible.

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, E. 110 Fall 2010

Comments

  1. Nicole P says

    December 7, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    That’s a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  2. Tara Bradway says

    December 10, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    @Nicole – Agreed.

    I’m so uncomfortable in the water too. This summer I went kayaking in Schroon Lake & River. I loved the river where it was a foot deep, and paddling across the lake where it’s closer to 200′ … so terrifying. I still refuse to bumper tube, but kayaking was a pretty triumphant experience.

    Reply

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About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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Shakespearean. Ecocritic. Swimmer. New book Ocean #objectsobjects Professor at St. John's in NYC. #bluehumanities #pluralizetheanthropocene

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stevermentz Steve Mentz @stevermentz ·
20 Jan

Send us your book proposals!

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stevermentz Steve Mentz @stevermentz ·
31 Dec

Much to remember in '22, including a fantastic fall in Germany at the @CarsonCenter. But especially one day in late October, while isolating with Covid in a rural farmhouse in Bavaria, when I saw my first all-creative publication, these little poems --

http://www.ghostbirdpress.org/2022/10/swim-poems-by-steve-mentz.html

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