posted
Being hot and humid up here, a friend of mine and I drove up to Lake Winnipesaukee, where I grew up. In order to escape the crowds, we hit up the tiny village beach...where we were the only ones there. How cool.
But this beach was where I first learned to swim. It was an interesting trip into awkward childhood memories of being told we're going to the beach...and suddenly finding yourself in unwilling swimming lessons.
(this is the kid who, at summer camp, sat on the shore and absolutely refused to take her swim test at age seven, though she could swim perfectly well)
I mucked through them as quickly as I could, then had to take advanced.
This required me jumping off the dock of doom.
The first time, I stood at the side of the dock for ten minutes.
Fifteen minutes...
Eventually, I jumped in.
Today, I stood at the side of the dock for a little over a minute. It's odd, how I STILL hate jumping into the water. I'm not afraid of it, I like the water, but not the jumping bit.
posted
There was a horror movie in my youth called Creepshow. It was a collage of several Stephen King stories.
One of the bits involved a dock/raft floating out in the middle of a lake. Four 'teenagers' take romp in water and swim out to the raft. A blob of black goo procedes to terrorize them. Scared the crap out of me when I saw it.
Lake Lanier in North Georgia has a little dock/raft exactly like the one in the movie. Whever my family would go to Lanier, I would always have this fear in the back of my mind that the blob would get me when I swam out to the raft.
I think large expanses of water are naturally a little scary to most people. Who knows what lurks just beneath the surface? Growing up in Florida, you hear all these stories about water mocassins and gators. Hell, you would see them on the news. Kids getting pulled under by gators, or stung by jelly fish and dying of shock, or killed by sharks. Going to the beach, people would clear out of the water all the time if they saw a fin in the water. Could be porpoise. Could be shark. No one stuck around to find out.
Water is death. We humans can't exist in water for very long. People are casual with water and it kills them. They take a shower, slip, and drown in an inch of water. Locally, they explore springs, take a wrong turn and get trapped by the current of the water against one of the cave walls and drown. Kids get stuck in the bottom of pools and drown.
Being afraid of water is good.
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posted
You know, I don't remember that part of the movie, but the short story that that short was adapted from scared the living crap out of me in 5th grade. I read it in a Twilight Zone magazine, and it was months before I went back out on the raft I'd built on the banks of a large pond out in the woods a mile or so behind my house.
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posted
My 2 eldest siblings are both marine biologists out east tell me that over half the people they take out for their first "deep dive" (out of sight of shore) have a panic attack as soon as they hit the water. There does seem to be an (anecdotally) innate fear of large bodies of water. I've always wondered which camp I'd fall in.
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quote:Three more stories told from a comic book are presented by "The Creep." The first is about a dime store Indian that seeks revenge on those who killed the store owner. The second is about a carnivorous mass of pond scum that attacks four people on a raft. The final tale is about a rich woman who accidentally kills a hitchhiker while speeding home from an affair with a male prostitute.
quote:Five tales of terror are presented in the gothic style of the old EC comics such as Tales From The Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. The first deals with a demented old man returning from the grave to get the Father's Day cake his murdering daughter never gave him. The second is about a not-too-bright farmer discovering a meteor that turns everything into plant-life. The third is about a vengeful husband burying his wife and her lover up to their necks on the beach. The fourth is about a creature that resides in a crate under the steps of a college. The final story is about an ultra-rich businessman who gets his comeuppance from cockroaches.
Edit: Except for the meteor, I remembered all the ones from Creepshow I, so I was surprised to hear that the Raft had ever been filmed.
quote: I think large expanses of water are naturally a little scary to most people.
Wow, never for me. It's weird how passionate this thread is making me in the opposite direction. My life revolved around water for many years, my family's life still does.
Water is the womb of life. Water is exhilarating freedom. Part of you has never lived until you have been tumbled over in a wave and come up laughing for joy. Water is erotic, but not in a specifically sexual sense. It has secrets you can never understand, and it could be angry at times yet it still it draws you in, lifts you up and comforts you.
posted
I by and large agree with you, AJ. Certainly I started swimming in "Moms 'n Tots" when I was still baby sized and have been swimming ever since. But I haven't ever been swimming with no land in sight and especially haven't been expected to dive and somehow orient myself with no landmarks other than a boat. I don't *think* it would scare me, but I can see how it might.
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posted
I have been in a relatively small boat with no land in sight, didn't go in the water though because it would have been too much hassle at the time for the people whose boat it was.
AJ, don't get me wrong. I've grown up in and around water. I basically grew up in the Y. I enjoy getting in the water and swimning around.
This doesn't change the fact that there ARE things in and about water that WILL kill you. When all is said and done, water is a hostile environment for humans to live in.
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quote:Erotic in the way it stimulates the senses, but it isn't really sexual
Isn't eroticism explicitly a sexual thing though? Wouldn't stimulating the senses in a non sexual way be more accurately described as "sensual"?
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posted
OJ, your turn of phrase was fine. It makes sense to me and is a better word for what you were trying to say than sensual.
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posted
I actually hadn't even seen your use of the term Banna--I must have missed that part of your post (I had a busy day at work today, so I skimmed more than usual). I just saw a discussion about words starting, and popped in with a comment.
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posted
Okay, I just went back and found the passage where you used the term. I really like your description! I'd probably still use the term sensual, but I don't think that either word quite conveys the right meaning. Anybody think of a better term?
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posted
I was spending a glorious day, sitting in my float tube on a lake in Utah's remote Uinta mountains, when something large bumped my leg.
I looked down into the water and saw a huge, dark object just below my swim fins. It must have been fifteen feet across.
I nearly whizzled in my waders.
Just then the sun came out from behind a cloud and illuminated the object, which turned out to be a moss-covered boulder. But how did the boulder move? I looked at the trees around the lake and realized that a slight breeze had been blowing and had blown me into the submerged boulder.
I don't like the idea of dangling my legs in dark water. Ever since a pack of small mouth bass attacked my legs while swimming in Arizona's Lake Pleasant I have a hard time if I can't see my legs in the water.
I have no problem dangling my legs in Utah's Bear Lake, which is a brilliant, milky blue color.
It must be the darkness of the water. You don't know what's in there with you.
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posted
When Sandbridge in Virginia Beach started eroding badly in the early 80's, I stepped on patch of mud exposed by sand being lost. It was slimy with little hard bumps in it, and my mind immediately conjured up something right out of Stephen King. My reaction was to jump so hard that, coupled with a well-timed wave, I did a flip and landed flat on my back in the slimy patch.
posted
I think I read that short myself....it was in one of his anthologies. Never knew it was in a movie, though.
I like being in the water, which is particularly odd, since I can't swim. I'm one of those odd people who just isn't particularly buoyant naturally; not only do I not float, it's my head that sinks first. I hate having water in my face, and to make matters worse, I have a deep surgical scar on my lower throat. When I get it underwater, I can feel the pressure on it and it feels as though I'm drowning. (It actually feels as though water is leaking in, though I'm reasonably sure that's not the case.)
Oh, and I was sure this thread was about the upcoming Fantastic Four movie....
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I only HEARD about blob in water movie, and I was still afraid swimming in ponds or anywhere where I couldn't see the bottom. And we only swam in ponds in Maine where I knew there were not any snakes or gators or anything more dangerous than a loon. I would swim, but I wouldn't go far from everyone else.
I'm a good swimmer. I don't have much patience for swimming laps, but I enjoy swimming with other people and playing games in the water, to me, has a great deal of fun out of water games miss.
And I love the ocean. Don't have to see the bottom, just give me the waves! Again, all my ocean experience is in Maine, where sharks and jellyfish aren't an issue (occasionally bluefish, though) I agree with AJ where the ocean is concerned. whether you're sailing on it, or swimming in it, its...wonderful. Especially with big strong waves far from the shore and a boogy-board
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