I dreamt last night that the dinos from Land Before Time were playing Wimbledon.

In case you haven't noticed by now, the titles to my posts have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the posts. So please don't read this expecting a game-set-match breakdown or anything. I wouldn't even know how to do that. The main thing I was concerned with during this dream was how the dinosaurs were holding the rackets without opposable thumbs. (I never figured that out.)

Anyway, on to more important matters. This is the story of how I passed my Davidson swimming test.
*Note: it's written in the present tense. I have no idea why. I apologize.

Freshmen orientation at Davidson is a lot like going to camp. Everyone is really awkward because no one knows anyone, you bond over the most random coincidences ("No way! Your middle initial is 'T'? Mine is too! Let's totally be best friends!"), you're forced to participate in ridiculous icebreakers ("Okay, let's go around the circle and share our favorite shape of pasta. I'm Christine and mine's the Spongebob variety of macaroni! Who's next!?"), and you're led around to your different activities like you're in first grade, for fear you'll get lost and end up getting mauled by a rabies-infected bat.
And then there's Freshmen Olympics. It has the same facade of a camp experience: you wear ridiculous outfits, you come up with badly-rhymed team chants, you allow yourself to be humiliated by playing field hockey with pool noodles. But what makes the Freshmen Olympics so treacherous, so unbearable, is that they were concocted to mask the pressure of the freshmen swimming test, to disguise it as "fun."
When you're as pale as the dead Mischa Barton in The Sixth Sense, like me, you tend not to venture out into the blazing sun too often. Which means I didn't spend the entirety of my summers splashing around the neighborhood pool collecting diving rings (whatever the purpose of those were) like most other kids. Tack onto that a massive fear of drowning--or really of water going anywhere near the highly vulnerable holes in my face; I can't even look at a bottle of eye drops without shuddering--and you have a recipe for a girl destined to use water wings for the rest of her life. I had accepted this fact long ago, but now my higher education institution of choice was threatening to change that situation or (quite likely) kill me in the process.
The entire day leading up to this death battle, I'm a wreck. What will they make us do? How deep will the water be? I don't know how to do any stroke but the doggie-paddle-for-dear-life! Which of my bathing suits is the most flattering? I need to at least look decent when the entire school comes to stare at my cold, dead body floating face down in the pool. If they try to make me go underwater without plugging my nose, maybe I can still transfer to my safety school? While the rest of my hallmates gear up for an evening of bonding and cheesy antics, I'm merely focused on not hyperventilating.
The swimming test is scheduled to be our final event of the evening, which gives me a tiny sliver of relief. A born procrastinator, I much prefer to put things off when it can be afforded. I can ignore my dread for at least a little while and actually participate--albeit clumsily--in the other events. Before I know it, I'm enjoying myself, enthusiastically running, jumping, passing, hitting, and cheering the night away. I'm even beginning to think that some of the activities aren't so stupid after all. Whistling the Andy Griffith theme song with twenty saltine crackers chewed up in your mouth? You could probably win America's Got Talent with an act like that!
When someone announces that we're at the final event before the swimming test, however, my red giant of fun and excitement explodes, leaving only a black hole of fear and panic in the pit of my stomach. (I know, what a stupid space metaphor, I agree.) I pay no attention to the event at hand--there was some water in some cups or maybe some numbers written on pieces of paper, I have absolutely no idea--and instead I focus on stopping my hands from trembling, what my obituary might sound like, who would get my The OC DVD collection since I'd carelessly forgotten to write a will. I briefly consider not taking the swimming test, owning up to my shameful inability to keep my head above water for more than five seconds. But I decide that the embarrassment would be too much. I choose to dutifully walk the high-dive plank to my watery, chlorinated death.
I'm handed a card with my name on it and told to strip off my clothes. I feel like I'm checking into prison. I get in line at one of the lanes feeling like someone has pulled a cork on me somewhere and all of my blood is draining out. I look on as scores of my fellow freshmen joyfully frolick up and down the lanes with ease, as if they're taunting me. A chorus of "nanny nanny boo boo" rings out inside my head. I shudder. Please, oh Neptune, oh Poseidon, oh Kingfish, oh Gorton's Fisherman, ANYONE, PLEASE JUST LET THIS END!
At last, it's my turn to swim. I hand a man my card and he gives me the instructions: one lap of breaststroke, one lap of backstroke, and one lap of my choice. Good thing I'll be dead by lap three, because making decisions under pressure is not my forte.
I sit on the edge of the pool and slide in. The water is painfully lukewarm, and I can feel my fingers and toes start to prune immediately upon immersion. I take a deep breath. I never thought I would die in a natatorium, and yet here I am. Goodbye world. Shiver me timbers. It was nice knowing you.
I begin to doggie paddle as inconspicuously as I possibly can. Five pawstrokes in, I realize I had been a fool to be relieved that this was my final event of the night. I had expended all of my energy hula-hooping and passing a basketball between my legs. Any effort that I may have been able to put into this swimming test at the beginning of the evening was used up. My tank is empty, and with gas prices as high as they are, I can't afford to fill up anytime soon. I'm doomed.
I somehow manage to make it to the other end of the pool, though I'm pretty sure I had been carried by the waves created by other swimmers in the pool and hadn't actually contributed to my own progress in any significant way. I pause at that end of the pool, clinging to the side, catching my breath. Alright, time to STRATEGIZE. How can I conserve what speck of energy I have left? Well, go slower, I guess. But how can you go slower when you were merely drifting along like a flimsy little piece of seaweed before? I don't know, but the guy I had given my card to is scribbling something down fiercely, so I know I need to keep moving before my efforts are questioned. I propel myself off the side of the pool as best I can and continue my nonchalant journey to my initial starting point.
That's when I notice that there's a completely different group of people swimming in the other lanes in the pool; in the time it took me to finish half of a lap, everyone else had finished three. This fact is not encouraging. I think I'm starting to cry, but with water splashing in my face from these freakish speedboats cruising in the lanes beside me, I can't tell. What feels like several minutes later, I reach my initial starting point and have a mini-celebration in my head. I know I can't really rest here for long, though, for fear that Mr. Angry-Note-Scribbler might spit on me in disgust, so I quickly prepare to continue on in my agony. But there's a problem. Backstroke? I've never done a backstroke in my entire life. I don't even think I've done anything in water on my back except take a bath, and even then I'm deathly afraid of drowning in the 6-inch deep water. There's no way I can do this.
And I can't. Not even halfway down to the other side of the pool, I quit trying. After attempting to lie on top of the water and do what feels like jumping jacks, and what quickly turns into me just violently moving my limbs in all directions as if I'm an epileptic in a laser show, I realize that I will soon be completely shot of energy, and will probably end up with several pulled muscles and dislocated joints. I return to my drifting doggie-paddle. Maybe The Scribbler has lost track of what lap I'm on, who I am, what city he's in, and he won't notice. A girl can dream.
Suddenly, I hear violent splashing coming from behind me. I panic. Is someone coming to save me from drowning? I had heard that drowning doesn't look like how they portray it in the movies. You don't flail around and scream and shoot water out of your nose. You just kind of slowly and silently sink to the bottom of the pool, hardly noticeable at all. Is that what's happening to me? As I turn my head and look behind me, though, I realize that it's not a rescuer coming to save me. It's four other girls taking the swimming test. It's getting so late that they're having to put multiple people in the lanes. Great, just what I need, witnesses to my utter failure. They pass me doing their flawless breaststrokes. I curse them in my mind, since I have no actual breath to use toward that end.
Having successfully drifted to the other end of the pool, I'm embarking upon my journey back to my initial starting point once again when I am lapped. They've moved onto backstroke, and I've barely completed a quarter of a lap. I'm frustrated at first, but then slightly amused. Is there seriously no one who has noticed my sheer ineptitude at this activity? I've been bobbing around this pool for an eternity, seizing like I shoved a fork in an electric socket, and I've caught the attention of no one? I wonder if this is like the time in 6th grade track practice when I passed out on the side of the track and woke up on my own thirty minutes later without having so much as raised an eyebrow. Maybe I'm invisible when I attempt to play sports. Kind of a cool attribute to have, really. I could probably save the world with my sports invisibility someday.
As I make a note of this in my mind, I finally reach my initial starting point again. One. More. Lap. I've made it this far, and, sure, I couldn't even do the right stroke and I'm hanging on by a thread tiny enough to sew a button on a mouse's sport-coat, but maybe I can actually pull this thing off!
My final lap is a blur. Only a few pawstrokes in, little black dots start to cloud my vision. Am I even breathing anymore? I have no clue. It takes every muscle in my body to keep me afloat, and only barely so, as I continually dip under the water and sputter it back up out of my lungs. Water fills my ears and I can only vaguely hear the splashing of the other four girls in my lane as they lap me for a final time. I don't notice. All I comprehend is that I'm flopping along, ironically, like a fish out of water, and I don't think I'm going to make it much farther. Well, I tried. And now here I am, dying, big black X's sure to replace my eyes at any moment. For some reason, I try to conjugate the French word for "to die," "mourir," only to find that I have no idea what the personal present tense is. Mort? Meurt? Morte? Mourt? Why am I trying to figure this out right now? Ah, well. Goodbye, life. It was nice to briefly mingle with you.
And then I hit a wall. And by that I mean I reach the end of the pool again. I've completed this portion of the swim test. A miracle upon miracles has occurred. Hallelujah choruses sing in my head. I'm alive! Certainly there's no way I could have passed, but at least I'm still breathing. Sort of. I scratch and claw my way out of the pool with the newfound energy I have from finishing those three laps. I stand, hyperventilate, shake the water out of my ears. I walk over to Mr. Angry to see how horrifically I failed the test.
He looks at me. "Name?" "Noah." He shuffles through some cards in his hand. "Congratulations, you passed. Take this card to the other pool to tread water."
"Wait... I passed?" He doesn't look at me, doesn't hear me. I don't exist to him anymore. I seriously consider asking him if he watched anything that just went down in that pool, but I refrain. If this guy, with his official-looking clipboard and white polo shirt, says I passed, then I'm not going to argue.
I would have done a celebratory dance, maybe a nice Fosse number, but the little black dots were coming back to my vision. I stumble to some bleachers next to the other pool and sit down, dropping my head between my knees. Some concerned ladies bring me a cup of water--probably the LAST thing I need at this particular moment--and tell me to take as much time as I need. A few minutes later, I'm feeling alright, so I decide to get the tread test over with so I can go back to my dorm room and just crash already. Surely treading water for three minutes can't be that difficult, right?
Wrong. Thirty seconds into it, I think I'm going to sink like the Titantic. I almost do, several times, but instead I sing "Part of Your World" in my head and imagine that I'm Ariel, pretend I'm "devotin' full time to floatin' under da sea" (I know, those songs are completely different, I realize that.) My Ariel role play does the trick: I pass the tread test.
Walking out of the natatorium, I feel lucky. Lucky that Mr. Angry hadn't paid a bit of attention to my struggles in the pool, lucky that I know all the words to "Part of Your World," lucky I'm not being driven to the morgue right at this moment. I haven't attempted to swim since, and I don't expect to do so anytime soon. I will continue to blame my avoidance of pools on my alabaster complexion, but all who read this will know the real reason.
I have a feeling that even if I'm reincarnated as a fish, I still won't be able to swim.

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