Just about any child who grows up as a “serious” swimmer usually ends up working a lot of the part time aquatics jobs. I am no exception. As promised, here is the flip side of my volunteer list, all of the paid-work I’ve done within the realm of swimming:
–Tiny Tots instructor (ages 4-8)
–Learn to Swim instructor (back then it was the Red Cross series)
–Stroke technique coach (age group)
–Assistant coach (age group)
–Lifeguard
–Private lesson instructor (all ages’ many adults who want to improve the swim leg of their Tris)
Hmmm…not as long as the volunteer list, nor as diverse. No, variety here springs from setting: the number of pools, facilities, and age-ranges. As well as the wacky situations that occur when you are an aquatics employee. One of my most bizarre situations? Covering a group learn-to-swim class last minute for a dozen Japanese boys under the age of six who didn’t speak any English.
Most enduring impact from working many years in aquatics? One of my best “parlor tricks” is the ability to recite, verbatim, all of the lines from Johnny Learns to Swim. Let me explain…
As a teenager, one of my regular summer jobs was teaching Tiny Tot lessons, as noted above. During the course of a summer, instructors offered four half-hour sessions per weekday, for four two-weeks sesions. On rain days (and we always had at least one per session) the back up plan was to watch Johnny Learns to Swim with our kids. So…just a rough estimate of views would be 4×4 per summer, then 16×5 summers. Yep, that’s a grand total of at least 80.
The best rain day scenario was when your kid didn’t show, because then you gathered with your friends and took “a role” for that showing, such as Johnny, Suzy, Mommy, Daddy or the narrator. My favorite role was the narrator. We also developed a trivia game. You won a point if you could come up with a question that no-one could answer correctly immediately, such as “how many different suits does mommy wear?” and “at what point during the film does a goose walk by in the background?”
Ah, the perks of being a life-long swimmer!
Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist