June Writing Challenge

Water, Water, Everywhere

What Is An Aquaphobe To Do?

I have a love-hate relationship with water.

Of course, there’s the “need water to survive” thing.

And I find flowing-water hypnotic. I can sit for hours gazing out to sea or a lake or even a river or creek. If there are waves or rapids, I literally zone out as I feel the waves rolling onto the shore and washing up onto the sand.

Just don’t put me IN the water.

When I was a boy, my friends and I practically lived at the community swimming pool. I discovered though that I really, really hated getting water up my nose (does anyone like it?) so it prevented me from learning how to swim or dive properly.

Most of my friends would dive in without any hesitation as they cut through the chlorine blue water. I would watch them and try to build up my courage to follow their lead but it never clicked, as soon as my toes left the edge of the pool I would automatically lift my face up, my neck straining as I fought to keep the water out of my nose! That inevitably changed my trajectory… to a bellyflop.

My mom gave me a bit of insight into my phobia. She said when I was around 2 or 3 years of age we were at the lake and I was playing along the water's edge as my mom chatted with my aunt. She says as soon as she turned away for just a moment I fell face-first into the water… I’d fallen and I couldn’t get up. Within seconds she saw what happened and lifted me out of the water as I coughed and sputtered and boy did I cry. She says from that point on I was timider of the water.

I would still wade into the creek to catch frogs and tadpoles but I always made sure that my head stayed well above water.

When I was about 7, my mom’s cousin, an RCMP officer, was on a lake canoeing when the oars got stuck in some reeds. He couldn’t get it loose and as he struggled with the oar, the boat flipped over on top of him and he drowned. It was shocking for the family and it just reinforced for me, how dangerous the water could be. This was a big, strong, healthy police officer who knew his way around the water, and he still drowned. What chance did I have?

I was enrolled in swimming lessons but after two attempts at getting a badge, and a very frustrated instructor, I couldn’t even pass pre-beginners. I decided then that swimming would not be a part of my life.

On a family fishing trip, my brother and I were alone in the boat and started fighting. My brother, who knew I couldn’t swim and was afraid of the water, jumped in the lake and started swimming toward the shore, singing “mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’ mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.” It was an old childhood song that he used to torment me with. As he swam further away I started bawling and was terrified about how I would get back to shore on my own. I didn’t know how to start the outboard motor, there were no oars, and I was not going to get in the water. Eventually, my brother swam back to the boat, probably realizing what my dad would do when he heard what had happened.

I envied my brother’s lack of fear of the water. I envied my friends for being able to swim and dive. And when I visited my cousins in Southern California, I envied them for being able to run into the surf, with or without a surfboard, and ride the waves into shore.

Fast forward to my early twenties, my mom’s aunt and uncle were on a fishing trip when their boat flipped over. My aunt was found a few hours later, alive but barely. It was a few days before they recovered my uncle’s body. More fuel for the fire.

So it's no surprise that I went through most of my life, being afraid of water or at least wary of it. I love to watch other people playing in the lake or ocean or in the pool and I can appreciate the natural beauty of water, and our lifeforce (blah, blah blah).

The older I got, the more that it bothered me and I became determined to get over my fear one day. Not only was I afraid of the open water but now I was also afraid of boats.

During a solo trip to Hawaii when I was in my mid-forties, I got a boogie board and actually went into the water, deeper than knee-deep! The boogie board helped to keep my head above water as I rode the waves into shore. I still didn’t go in too deep… my feet were always touching the bottom, but I had a lot of fun.

So emboldened by my boogie boarding experience, I next decided to try parasailing. I thought that would help me with my fear of water and with my fear of heights… a double bonus.

I got into the relatively small boat and held on for dear life until we were far enough offshore. They harnessed me up and before I knew it I was lifting off from the back of the boat. I was holding on so tight that every muscle in my body was straining. But I stayed with it and kept getting higher and higher… further away from the water but too high for comfort. And then I saw it. A massive hammerhead shark, bigger than the boat, was swimming below me. And of course, that’s when they decided to dip me in the water. I was screaming at the top of my lungs “No, No! SHARK!” They obviously couldn’t hear me and I could see them laughing at my reaction. My feet barely touched the water when they brought me back up again.

Luckily they brought me back down to the boat just a few minutes later and as I landed they could see that I was wide-eyed and talking a mile a minute as I told them about the hammerhead. They said “Oh you saw it? We had reports of a large hammerhead in the area but haven’t seen it yet.” WTF?! They said that I wasn’t in any danger but, of course, I didn’t know that when I was about to drop into the water near the swimming shark. Funny enough, that incident didn’t make me more scared, in fact, it was a lot of fun and gave me a good story to tell.

I was now on a roll so a short time after my trip to Hawaii, a workmate and I tried wakeboarding as part of a media demonstration during a wakeboarding competition on Lake Ontario. I had a life vest on, so I felt okay about that but I couldn’t get up on the board and spent about 10 minutes doing nothing but faceplants… and of course… water up the nose. But surprisingly that didn’t scare me off either. I was determined to get over this phobia.

A few years later, I tried snorkeling at an uninhabited remote island in the Andaman Sea off the coast of India. The small boat ride from Havelock Island was terrifying but I held on and when it came time to jump into the water with our snorkel, I refused to take off my life vest. Imagine trying to dive down while wearing a floatation vest. I would get down a few feet and then pop right back up to the surface. It built up my confidence and I had a lot of fun. Eventually, I did a few dives without the life vest once I realized I could actually float in the saltwater, without it.

A month or so later I even tried scuba diving, which I wrote about here.

I also fearlessly took a slow ride through the backwaters of Kerala on one of the traditional houseboats — another story, another time.

It took me about 50 years to finally feel reasonably comfortable around water. I’m still not great in small boats. I still can’t dive and I can’t swim very well, although ironically I can now swim okay underwater. I’m glad I didn’t give up.