For 2014, three Post staffers face their fears — and learn to swim, ski or drive a car. We’ll check in on how they’ve done in March.
The Challenge: Learn to Swim
My phobia of swimming developed when I was 6 years old, taking lessons at my hometown pool. I remember being submerged in the water, staring up at the light, unable to move while my swimming instructors gripped my hands and feet. They were keeping me underwater so they could teach me “how to hold my breath for 60 seconds.”
I thought I might never breathe again.
With all the dying strength I could muster, I wriggled and writhed — desperately hoping they’d let go. Finally, a release. I was up, breathing sweet air.
“That’s it,” I thought to myself. “I’m never swimming again.”
Unlike flying, this was a fear I found easy to avoid. My parents never went to the beach; my tiny school in upstate New York didn’t have a pool or a swim team. As an adult, I preferred vacations exploring ancient cities instead of white, combed sands. In my 20s, I never even owned a bathing suit.
Along the way, I encountered a few problems, mainly social embarrassment. When told of my disability for the first time, most people would react, eyes bugging: “You don’t know how to swim?!”
I felt a small sting of shame. But better that than the water on my face, rushing into my nose and ears, pulling me to the bottom!
In my 30s, I became friends with a person who had a pool, and I enjoyed lying next to it. I even got in once (holding the edge for dear life) and discovered the magic of being cool and weightless on a hot summer day.
It emboldened me. At 37, I tried a “beach vacation” for the first time, where walking into water (no further than my waist!) was like venturing onto a beautiful, new planet. On another trip last year, I strapped on a life vest and snorkel and floated along the skin of the Caribbean Sea, spying bright blue fish below.
The plan: I’ve signed up for adult swimming lessons at Equinox. At 41, I know there’s joy to be had in the water; my older, better self needs to stand up to my frightened 6-year-old. I need to let go of the edge and glide through the water, without a life vest, without fear. I will tackle this phobia once and for all. Let’s just hope they don’t hold my head underwater!
— Margi Conklin
The Challenge: Get a Driver’s License
I inherited the driving gene from my mother, who, according to family lore, once turned the wrong way into oncoming traffic on Broadway — with my teenage sisters and an infant version of myself in the car — and never drove in the city again. Thirty-five years later, I am so traumatized that I have (a) blocked the incident from my memory, and (b) never learned how to drive.
I’ve tried. In high school, I went to driver’s ed, where I was informed rather undiplomatically that I wasn’t nearly ready for the test. I tried again a year after college, but, in the listless way that 22-year-olds easily grow bored with anything that smacks of order and regularity, stopped going after a while.
But it’s no longer just an inconvenience, it’s an embarrassment. Beer hawkers at Citi Field a decade younger than I am have refused to sell me booze because I didn’t have proper ID. (My learner’s permit expired in 2004.) The fact that I fell in love with and married another NYC-born non-driver means that we have doomed ourselves to a life stuck in Manhattan. Enough!
The plan: Spend the next eight weeks driving my heart out. I successfully renewed my learner’s permit in December. My in-laws have a car (one of the great impediments to learning in the past was having nothing to practice on), so I plan to beg them. (It’s a Mercedes, so I doubt they’ll say yes.) I will cash in the chits of anyone who has ever said, “I have a car you can practice on.” One of my sisters (unscarred by the incident mentioned above) lives in New Jersey and has made the offer.
I have the names of several auto schools. They each offer the state-mandated driver’s safety course, will arrange a road test, and offer practice time with an instructor ranging from five hours (starting at around $400) to 30 hours ($1,590) — hopefully enough to turn this nervous, shell-shocked New Yorker into the next Mario Andretti.
— Max Gross
The Challenge: Learn to Downhill Ski
I have two main reasons I’ve never been skiing in my life: The first is my potent distrust for all things winter. Born by the ocean (literally, in a New Jersey town called Neptune), I spend my off-season ticking off the days until summer, often pulling my surfboard out of storage just to clean, wax and rewax it while watching the “Endless Summer” movies in a loop.
The second is summed up by this quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” I have never fully committed to the frosty season, its suggested outerwear or its activities, because boy, are they expensive! You’ve got your coat, boots, snow pants, gloves, scarves, something called bindings, lift tickets and the hospital bills when I inevitably do a 40-mph French kiss with a pine tree. Winter sports seem like an attempt by some preppy bandit to steal my whiskey money. (It’s $150 for lift ticket, lessons and equipment, not even counting transportation costs or actual winter coat and gloves.)
The plan: All this said, I can’t help but feel left out, years after the rich kids would show up at high school on Monday, casually forgetting they still had their lift tickets hanging off their jackets. So I’ve been lobbying my friends to show me the slopes to see what it’s all about.
The folks who run the NYC Beach Bus have started a ski bus this summer doing day trips to Mountain Creek, NJ. I’ll be dragging some ski-savvy friends along (including one who was an instructor at a German ski resort) to show me how to not die a cold, lonely mountain death. Not that I have any real fear of death: I’ve thrown myself at enough dangerous situations — from adventure sports like zip-lining to climbing street scaffolding when perilously drunk — to become one of those poster boys for ObamaCare. And sure, the cold sucks, but the snow is the only justifiable part of winter’s existence.
My goal is to either get good enough at it that I understand the rush — or to try it for long enough that I can dismiss it as frilly nonsense until it gets warm outside again.
— Tim Donnelly