Swimming

At some point in my childhood, it was decided we children should have swimming lessons. My recollection is that the choice was related to our parents wanting to rent a vacation cottage on an island off the coast of Maine - although I may misremember. Sometimes our parents got it into their heads to enroll us in sporty activities for no apparent reason.

Like ice skating. Every saturday morning one winter we were packed up and sent off with my dad's already rather senile father who drove us to skating lessons at a local rink. My guess is the skating lessons were meant as a substitute for saturday morning TV and to give our parents "adult time". Despite knowing how to skate, the activity never really grabbed any of us, but I still had skates as recently as last year. Since I can now no longer walk from the garage to my building on campus without joint pain, I sold my ice skates last Fall.

I can and do still swim though. I never was a champion swimmer. But the freedom to move, float, cruise, or chug along in the water is wonderful. Now that I live in a town with a pool (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get access to), I think the next time I'm feeling well, I'll go check it out.