I have a severe issue staying focused. My husband, Mr. Bourne (that's how I want to refer to him in my blog), is probably the best witness to this on a daily basis. A conversation with me can be quite the test of one's concentration skills. I like to think my scattered thought patterns are as humorous as Rose Nylund's from The Golden Girls, but I know that's just not true.
So, this is how my brain works sometimes. I'll see something and it will start my mind wandering. Today, it was a blurb online about sea dragons. Watching the video of this one sea dragon floating along made me think about seahorses (which are in the same family as sea dragons). I hadn't thought about seahorses since I was a kid and decided to do a little research online. I watched some YouTube video of seahorses and remembered that the male of the species is the one who gets pregnant. Then my brain just went on and on. I wonder what the "purpose" of seahorses are? I wonder why it was decided by nature for the male to carry the babies? I remember getting kind of freaked out by seahorses as a kid because they looked just enough like a real horse (their heads really do look kinda "horse-like) to creep me out. In the end I spent about two hours researching and thinking about seahorses. Funny thing is, I've never even seen a seahorse in real life and might possibly never see one.
Watching the seahorses swimming around in the water made me think about my impending swimming lesson tonight. OK, here's the story. I can't swim. I am horrified of the thought of swimming. I always have been. When I was a kid, I took swimming lessons at our local YWCA and was terrible at it. I remember the first night when the instructor told me to "swim" to him, I sunk to the bottom of the pool and panicked. When I get into a pool, I get this surreal feeling of it expanding. I feel like there is water everywhere and that I'm going to get swept away or lost. I can't really explain it, but it makes me have panic attacks sometimes just thinking about having to swim. Back a few years ago I decided to learn to swim just in case I was ever in a situation in which I had to save my own life by swimming. I found the perfect swimming class at The University of Virginia..."Terrified Adult Swim". I have to admit that the title of the course is a bit...well...embarrassing. I have to walk up to the admittance desk at the gym and tell a 19 year old kid, "Yes, I'm here for the Terrified Adult swim class." I can only imagine them looking at the 39 year old (who is most likely the same age as their parents) in front of them and thinking all kinds of humiliating thoughts, each including me needing rubber swim panties in case I get scared and have an accident in the pool. That's a far stretch, but you get the idea. I really like the instructor for the class and she understands that years of fear might not be washed away in one term of the course. This is the fourth or fifth time I've taken the class and I'm still griped by fear. Right now, writing this, my head is starting to ache. It's also embarrassing for the instrutor to see it's me on the first night and tell me to go on and get into the pool while she discusses the administrative policies with those who have never taken the class--I can quote her entire spiel. Anyway, I'm going tonight. I think each time I take the class I get a little braver. I can swim a few feet before I realize that I'm actually swimming, that there isn't anything solid to grab onto around my body, and start to panic. I may never be able to save anyone else's life in a swimming situation, but I might be able to float my own way to safety.
