Since I was a kid, I’ve spent my summers in and around various bodies of water. The local pool, the ocean, various Great Lakes and some not so great ones, the odd pond or river. For the first five or so years of my life, a wading pool, the kind made of hard plastic with a slide built in, plastic that cracks and splits in the heat of the sun and eventually scrapes a chubby limb or two. Do they still make them like that? They shouldn’t.
I love water (hi, named my own Substack Open Water for a reason!) and I swim in any body of water I can. My current water based amusement is that I am VERY VERY buoyant. I don't really have to tread at all to say upright and head out of the water in the deep end and I can float like a lily pad for forever. The other day one of my daughter's friends was marveling about it and going on and on and on about "HOW CAN YOU DO THAT??" when I finally gave in and gestured at my 42K sized boobs and said "well, I kind of come equipped with my own flotation devices..."
Two 11 year old girls thought that this was the most hilarious thing they ever heard and one of them very loudly declared "I can't WAIT until MY floatation devices finally come in!"
This feels like collective memory. Really hits at the core, verbalized so vividly and truly in a way that's very validating. It's tough when you're in the middle of interrogating "why the fuck does this still matter to adult-me? I'm stronger than this!" But the feelings still arise. And it can be so hard to take your own feelings seriously when that happens. Thank you for this.
the painful water memory i'm laughing about despite the residual angst: being called "chubby chelsea" by a random preteen boy at the municipal swimming pool i was lucky enough to live a block away from. it sucked, and obviously still lives rent-free in my mind... but "chubby chelsea"??! that's a hilarious use of alliteration by an idiot boy who didn't know me (or the fact that my name is leah).
still: i love swimming pools and hot tubs and will forever be the last person to get out when it's time to leave, regardless of my silly body.
Being at a family camp in Northern California as the guest of a friend from elementary school--the counselors were launching kids into the air from the water using a fireman's basket hold and I got in their arms and one of them said, "Oh boy ok this will be the one time you get to do this" and other kids had been tossed like six or seven times and I died a little inside on that day at age 11.
Slightly different water adjacent trauma here but I am a very pale person who grew up in Florida and cannot tan. One summer in my early teens I was at the top of a waterslide waiting for the lifeguard to give me the "go" signal and he said, "Did you just get out of the hospital or something?" I didn't understand. "You look like a ghost." And I've carried that with me.
My childhood BFF started puberty years before I did, and I was unintentionally a Neptune. I remember coming to her house and being annoyed it was taking so long for her to work up the courage to put a tampon in. Then when she spread her legs wide, I remember saying asking something like “why do your legs feel like that? I thought you started shaving?” Not cool, 9-year-old me.
I love water (hi, named my own Substack Open Water for a reason!) and I swim in any body of water I can. My current water based amusement is that I am VERY VERY buoyant. I don't really have to tread at all to say upright and head out of the water in the deep end and I can float like a lily pad for forever. The other day one of my daughter's friends was marveling about it and going on and on and on about "HOW CAN YOU DO THAT??" when I finally gave in and gestured at my 42K sized boobs and said "well, I kind of come equipped with my own flotation devices..."
Two 11 year old girls thought that this was the most hilarious thing they ever heard and one of them very loudly declared "I can't WAIT until MY floatation devices finally come in!"
This feels like collective memory. Really hits at the core, verbalized so vividly and truly in a way that's very validating. It's tough when you're in the middle of interrogating "why the fuck does this still matter to adult-me? I'm stronger than this!" But the feelings still arise. And it can be so hard to take your own feelings seriously when that happens. Thank you for this.
the painful water memory i'm laughing about despite the residual angst: being called "chubby chelsea" by a random preteen boy at the municipal swimming pool i was lucky enough to live a block away from. it sucked, and obviously still lives rent-free in my mind... but "chubby chelsea"??! that's a hilarious use of alliteration by an idiot boy who didn't know me (or the fact that my name is leah).
still: i love swimming pools and hot tubs and will forever be the last person to get out when it's time to leave, regardless of my silly body.
Being at a family camp in Northern California as the guest of a friend from elementary school--the counselors were launching kids into the air from the water using a fireman's basket hold and I got in their arms and one of them said, "Oh boy ok this will be the one time you get to do this" and other kids had been tossed like six or seven times and I died a little inside on that day at age 11.
Slightly different water adjacent trauma here but I am a very pale person who grew up in Florida and cannot tan. One summer in my early teens I was at the top of a waterslide waiting for the lifeguard to give me the "go" signal and he said, "Did you just get out of the hospital or something?" I didn't understand. "You look like a ghost." And I've carried that with me.
My childhood BFF started puberty years before I did, and I was unintentionally a Neptune. I remember coming to her house and being annoyed it was taking so long for her to work up the courage to put a tampon in. Then when she spread her legs wide, I remember saying asking something like “why do your legs feel like that? I thought you started shaving?” Not cool, 9-year-old me.