I love the Y. Each day we have swim time (sometimes twice a day), crafts, and I'm meeting all kinds of kids who seem to know a lot more about everything (including bad words) than I do.
Fridays are movie days at day camp. So far I've seen Flight of the Navigator, and this week something happened to one of the counselors or something so the bigger kids are having to sit with the younger ones so we can watch a movie together.
I can't find anyone that I've gotten to know, so I'm just going to sit Indian style on the floor where I don't have look over a bunch of kids' heads and watch the movie. Cue the counselor turning on the TV, and older boys hooting. Must be a really good movie.
There's lots of water, and these guys are on a boat. They're in some kind of gear, swimming, diving or something. Now there's a leg floating around under water, and people are screaming, running out of the ocean as fast as possible. The music is scary. Really scary. I'm covering my eyes.
After a while I look again. Things have gotten quiet. I think the gross stuff is over. Then this guy swims over to some shipwreck or something. He goes underneath the boat and finds a man's body, floating, with one eye ball missing and these root-looking things coming out of his eye socket. I am now completely freaked out.
I go to an adult, and tell her that I don't think I should be watching this. She tells me it's fine and sends me back to sit down. So I do. And I watch. Even though it's gross, and freaky. Because like anyone my age, even when we know we aren't supposed to look, especially when we know we aren't supposed to look, we do.
Fast forward approximately three years. My mom has met a wonderful guy, and they get married. He even adopts me. He is awesome. And even better? The house we just moved into has a pool.
But guess what. I can't swim. I mean, I can swim, I swim very well, actually. I just can't swim alone, in the deep end, at all. Every time I go down there, down near the drain, I see the man with no eye, the roots wiggling around. I see Jaws himself, his mouth agape, coming at me with his big shiny teeth. And guess what else. I can't swim in a pool, in the deep end, by myself, for the next ten years. Somehow Jaws knows which pool I am in, no matter where I go, and he's always there, smiling at me, by the drain.
So thanks, YMCA day camp. Thanks so much. And while I'm at it, I might as well thank Fort Roosevelt, one lady in particular actually, for reading Rikki-tikki-tavi to me - you have no idea how scared I was of the drain in my bathtub, for years.
