OCT 3, 2024 | FEATURES | By Leigh Walden, Co Editor-In-Chief
I am not a morning person — not for things I want to do, not for things I don’t want to do, and certainly not for things I don’t want to do that I’m not being explicitly forced to do. If I wasn’t on a GPA-based scholarship at Colorado College, there is a very real chance that I would be one of those people who only shows up to class one or two times a week. Even for my most beloved classes. I mean this with so much sincerity — fuck getting up. Whoever invented it is a bitch.
So when I found myself getting up at 6:30 a.m. on a Friday, when I didn’t even have class, to do something that I not only didn’t want to do, but was actively afraid of doing, my first instinct was to roll back over and go back to what was a very tantalizing dream starring none other than My One Real Crush.
I wish I could tell you that it was of my own volition and personal will that I resisted the urge. Alas, I am a journalist and the truth matters. I did not resist that temptation on my own. I did not resist that temptation really at all. In fact I kind of did just that — I was just getting back into that dream and it was getting GOOD when my phone vibrated under my pillow. UGH. The world oft roots against me.
It was only because of my dear friend, my swim partner/coach and, in a lot of ways, my life inspiration that I did something I have been promising myself to do for months. Today I was going to start my journey of learning how to swim.
Before any of you assholes laugh — I grew up here in Colorado. A landlocked state. Where I could easily go hike a mountain instead of doing something masochistic like diving into one of the things that is very well known for killing people. Large bodies of water are something to fondly gaze upon. To sit in a chair besides. Perhaps with a book and a cozy blanket. My first real experience of wanting to get into water was learning to surf while I lived in Spain. In fact that was more or less the impetus for me learning how to swim, because while I was surfing I somewhat often “almost drowned” and “struggled to stay above the water” and “endangered myself and others around me.”
Don’t blame my swimming ignorance on me. Not knowing how to swim is somewhat genetic. My father is a retired colonel in the Marines and he never learned to swim, and it was literally never an issue for him. Except for when he almost drowned on his and my mom’s honeymoon. But that’s a story for another time.
There I was putting on sweats over a swimsuit at 7:02 on a Friday to embarrass myself on what is A Very Small Campus (™.) This is what I find to be one of the most disturbing aspects of going to a school as small as CC — everyone knows your shame. There are now, as far as I counted, at least 22 people who I will see often that know that I genuinely struggle to blow bubbles out of my nose under water. I’m not exaggerating, we spent at least 30 minutes out of our hour swimming working on me literally just putting my head and blowing bubbles. On another note we really need to come up with a more badass way to say “blowing bubbles.”
Trying new things at CC is devastatingly intimate. I have been lucky to have been able to work or briefly live in large cities and I relish the coziness of getting to be a complete tart while trying something new as nothing more than someone passing through.
While I was in D.C. I taught myself how to longboard by splitting open my knees in a parking lot. In Spain, I taught myself to surf by getting my ass handed to me by the ocean. In Alaska, I got to learn the basics of repairing airplane wing fabric by fucking up a lot of fabric. At CC I will learn how to swim by swallowing a fuck-ton of chlorinated water.
Which sucks to think about. I don’t like swallowing chlorinated water, and while intellectual Leigh understands that trying new things means being bad at them at first, narcissistic Leigh is horrified at the thought of not being compared to Katie Ledecky the second I get into the pool.
I think, however, that this is possibly one of the more important things for me to get over in my young life. Because as fun and sometimes glamorous as constant travel is, eventually I will settle down somewhere. In a place where hopefully people know my name. And I’ll want to try new things and not let worrying about how I look or how scared I am stop me.
As my time at CC comes to a close this year (God-willing), I can hope that my takeaway is something even bigger than just accepting that being a human being is constantly just a little embarrassing. I’m hoping I can really let it sink in that being known and seen is one of the purset joys imaginable. Because, yes, that means one of your copy editors is gonna see you spurt water out of your nose at 7:45 in the morning and, yes, some mild acquaintances are gonna watch you get winded doing one (1) lap of kicking on a kickboard, but it also means that you’re gonna have a lot of people cheering you on, saying kind things and encouraging you to keep going, and that is so insanely lucky and cool.
So, This is your formal recommendation from your parasocial acquaintance and co-EIC: go eat some shit. Eat shit multiple times. Be bad at things and cheer on people you know who are being brave enough to be bad at things. And if you see me in the pool feel free to lie to me and tell me I do in fact look like Katie Ledecky — or at least tell me that I didn’t actually look like I was near drowning.