From mid-summer of 2016 to early 2017 I was struggling with ongoing back pain. I didn’t feel entirely like myself because I am such an active person and so I think that I was in a bit of a depression. I have a friend who was encouraging me to try swimming as a low-impact way to be active, and finally I made the leap and booked lessons for May and June with Toronto Recreation. I was pretty happy when my roommate Susan later decided to sign up with me for the same class! We signed up for Adult Swim 2, but by the end of our first lesson we had graduated to Adult Swim 3! Susan and I were in luck because the third person who was supposed to be in our class dropped out and so it was like we had our own personal instructor! We refined our swim strokes, learned egg-beater, learned how to stride jump, and practiced diving. Susan was already a fairly strong swimmer, but learning to dive was a huge step for her because as a kid she had an ear infection and so never put her head underwater. I on the other hand was very comfortable with diving, but had to work at refining my swim strokes. Breast stroke was the hardest for me to learn, probably because I had to unlearn the wrong way of doing it! We also made first attempts at trying Butterfly! We were likely doing it all wrong (the instructor didn’t know it well and it wasn’t in the requirements for Adult Swim 3), but it was very fun to try and get a feeling for it! We also tried the somersault that swimmers do to turn around at the end of the pool.
I have not yet shared the funniest part of the story. When Susan and I had signed up for the lessons, we both needed new bathing suits and I needed goggles and a swim cap. We both ended up liking the same Speedo swimsuit we found at SportChek, and decided that we didn’t care if we were matching. We joked around that we could come into the swimming lessons pretending that we were freakishly close besties who intentionally dressed like twins, or else that we were two strangers who didn’t know each other and who upon seeing each other were appalled that the other had worn the same thing. We couldn’t help but document our roomie adventure by taking a photo in our matching swim suits in the dated change room (note the very bizarre ducts behind that we wondered if whether they were blow dryers)! Susan was also so proud of her diving that we decided take a video during our last lesson… and since we were already matching, we couldn’t help but make up a short synchronized dive sequence. It even included the “dab” move that Susan taught me is all the rage with her students. What a great memory of doing this together! What’s more is that it has become such a normal part of my week that I have managed to continue it by going to a drop-in lane swim on Wednesday nights. I am very proud of myself for finally doing something that I had talked about doing for so long! Next goal: do a sprint triathlon!
Life Section 
Leave a Reply