Growing up, my house was full of books, magazines and newspapers. I was surrounded by letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters and novels. Every opportunity to be an early reader was presented to me, but did I go for it? Nope. Why not? Because I also came from a house of teachers and I knew what their job was. It was to teach kids, at a school. So, why learn to read on my own when it was the teacher’s job to pass that information along? I figured just like it was Mr. Roger’s job to take me to the crayon and toilet bowl-making factories and it was the mailman’s job to deliver music catalogs filled with buy 8, get one free deals (plus a million of those postage stamp-like stickers of all of the cassette tapes available that I could lick and stick to everything in the house), it was my first grade teacher’s job to teach me to read. With this idea firmly planted in my head, my mom tied my shoes (I was a bit behind the curve on shoe-tying it would seem and Velcro had not yet hit the shoe scene), packed my Tupperware bowl of Lucky Charms in my Sesame Street lunchbox and delivered me to my first day at Van Buren Elementary School. Eight hours later, with straggling shoelaces, a milk-film lined plastic container nestled next to my Big Bird thermos, I walked out the side door of that same building literate. (Okay, literate in a first grade sense.) Yes, it took just one day for me to go from being a non-reader to a reader. Apparently, I had more book sense that I had let on, but I wasn’t going to show it until the teacher had done her job. (Someone give that woman a raise!)

Jump ahead two decades.

After years of half-hearted attempts to learn to drive a manual transmission vehicle, I was in my early twenties and still couldn’t get my husband’s truck out of the driveway if there had been an emergency. Driving the back roads around Marsing, I could eventually jerk the truck into first gear, get it moving and finally find some rhythm as I shifted upwards to normal driving speeds. That was all well and good when it was just some coyotes and pheasants as spectators, but add in even a single other car and my little bit of stick-shift confidence went flying out the window of the stalled pickup. I’d basically given up ever driving a manual vehicle anywhere witness-able by human beings, when, in the market for a new car, I fell in love with one of the new VW Beetles. (I guess that dates me a bit, as the “new” Beetles have since had yet another make-over!) With no skills to speak of, I bought a stick shift car, which I couldn’t drive home the twenty freeway miles to my house. Since we had gone car shopping in Thad’s stick shift truck, he couldn’t take the new car home either. With the pile of car sale papers adding up and my hand cramping from signing and initialing every detail known to man, I made a call to my sister, who drove an automatic, but could drive a manual, to come pick up my new car and deliver it to my house, with me following her in her car. With my shiny black Beetle safely in the driveway of my house, I had forced myself into a situation where I HAD to learn to drive it- for real. The next day, out I headed, across town to the court house for my license and registration, only killing the engine at every stop sign and railroad crossing, embarrassingly waving “so sorry” waves to the line of cars building behind me at each intersection and painfully lurching into parking spaces as I ran my new-car errands. But, by the time Thad got home from work that night, I was a near-master of the stick-shift. (Well, of my car’s stick-shift. It didn’t take me long to discover that his truck, the one I had frustratingly been learning on in fits and starts over the last few years, was one of the most persnickety transmissions I’d ever drive.)

And now jump ahead one more decade.

This last week was the Chinese New Year (happy year of the snake!), which means the Consulate was closed and it was time to get a little sunshine. For years I’ve seen pictures on the internet of huts perched on stilts above gorgeous, clear, blue seas. A little research said that many of these rooms could be found in the Maldives, and a bit more hunting turned up a direct flight from Chengdu to Male, meaning pollution-free skies, equatorial sunshine, silky soft sand beaches and a rainbow of tropical fish were a mere six hours away. There was only one problem with that plan though- I can’t swim. (Okay, two problems, the second being that I am pasty white and genetically am never meant to live anywhere near the Equator, but that is a dilemma for another day…maybe bidding day.)

On a secluded island, fifty miles from the capital city and only reachable by seaplane, snorkeling is one of the top holiday activities. But, as I said, I am no swimmer. Bless their hearts, my parents did their duty in this realm. They enrolled me in summer after summer of Caldwell Recreation’s swim classes at the public pool. With three kids and an always full summer schedule, we were always enrolled in the first course of the summer, starting in early June, and the first classes of the day. While this made sense from a parental-point of view, I have to say that for a reluctant swimmer, facing that early morning, not yet sun-warmed pool was no easy task. But, summer after summer I went to those classes for a few weeks and summer after summer I hated putting my head under the water, I hated jumping off the diving board and I hated flailing around in a pool that I’m pretty sure had more “p” than “ool.” When it was clear I wasn’t making much headway in the skills department, my parents took me to private lessons. This was better, in that it was in the afternoons and in a private backyard pool, and I am sure I made more progress in that summer than I did in my multitude of public sessions, but still, floating is the only water skill I really possess. In case of a water emergency, my plan has always been to float on my back or doggy paddle until help arrives. I think it is a solid plan.

But, when faced with a week-long vacation on the above mentioned tropical island, I figured it was probably time to pull out that stubborn streak that was the impetus behind waiting until day one of first grade to read or purchasing a car I couldn’t actually drive to force me in to learning how to operate a manual transmission. Armed with flippers, goggles and a snorkel and a bungalow with a private staircase leading directly into the sea, it was time to swim.

I would like to claim that I bailed into the water, swam with the fishes (in a good way!) and could now be mistaken for a big white fish, but my first attempt at snorkeling was not quite that smooth. With Thad as my personal lifeguard, I flipper-ed and masked up and painstakingly crawled down to the ocean, step by step. Once I had eased into the water, I clung to the railing like a barnacle, sure I was going to be swept out to sea and never seen again. (All this before my hair was even wet!) Getting comfortable with the lack of touchable bottom, I put my goggled head under the water, only to instantly hyperventilate. While my brain logically knew air was coming through the tube that broke the surface, my lungs freaked out and I was pretty sure I was going to die, while still in barnacle-mode.

Slowly, but surely, over the next hour, I ventured away from my railing, floundering from hut to hut like someone who was raised far from any ocean. (Southern Idaho anyone?) As my confidence grew, we were able to eventually leave behind the security of the railings and head out into the coral, visiting fish in their own homes. It was a bit surreal, being inside the world’s biggest aquarium! As I pulled myself waterlogged and sunburned self back up onto the deck of our bungalow (avoiding the two crabs who lived there all week as well), I wouldn’t claim myself to be a snorkeling champion but I was comfortable and confident and ready to not only see new parts of the reef around our island, but I was already pondering possible snorkeling destinations for our next R&R.

Some may call it stubbornness or pigheadedness, but I’d rather put a positive spin on it and say that once I set my mind to something, I’ll make it happen. That might mean making sure my first grade teacher gets a chance to do her job properly or that I don’t learn to drive a stick-shift until it becomes necessary for the car I want, but once I see the purpose in learning something new, I’m all over it, just like those clingy barnacles!

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