Swim Lessons

Heritage Jr High School, Littleton, CO. 7th grade, 1972. New school, new swimming pool. I hated PE anyway. And I didn’t know how to swim. There was some new requirement with the new school that everyone had to take a swimming class. All PE-classes were single-sex, except that the swim classes were co-ed, I guess to make better use of the facilities. Anyway, I took a beginning-swimming class. The class was full(crowded) of students that already knew how to swim and was taking a beginning-level because it was “easier” (The following year, you couldn’t get into the beginning class unless you could prove you couldn’t swim!). I was one of two boys in the class that absolutely couldn’t swim. The woman coach they had teaching the class didn’t have time to teach the two of us to swim because the class was too full. So the two of us were put into the charge of the student-assistant. The other guy learned to swim. I showed up in my swimsuit everyday, and stood in a corner of the shallow end of the pool. For that, I got the passing grade of “C”. All the boys wore nearly identical dark blue swim trunks that were about like white briefs(underwear) in cut. To this day, I can’t swim. The showers were communal. I hear that these days, because of some Title IX requirement for equal PE instruction, all PE classes are co-ed, and many of the contact-sports have been eliminated.