Flipping Out!

I wear a necklace, cause I wanna know when I'm upside down. -- Mitch Hedberg

For the first time in my adult life, I have managed to do a forward roll.  In the water.  Near the wall of the pool.  And it kinda sorta almost looked like a flip turn.  Yeah me!

When I was little, I did gymnastics.  My mom had me take classes and my dad built me a low wooden balance beam that I played with in the back yard.  I had gymnastics books and watched gymnastics on TV.  I was never very good - I managed to get to a one-handed cartwheel.  I tried an aerial cartwheel a couple times, but mostly landed on my head.  I never managed a walkover or flip.  And definitely, I was better at tumbling than at any of the apparatus events.  I wasn't fast enough for the vault, strong enough for the bars, or coordinated enough for the beam.  But I did love to tumble.

Sometime after 8th grade, however, I lost the ability to flip my legs move over my head.  I did a couple cartwheels as an adult to prove to my daughters I could, but it made my wrists hurt.  But you weren't going to find me doing forward rolls, or backward rolls, or straddle rolls, or anything of the sort.  It made me a little dizzy.  Or a lot of dizzy.

So when the Master's program Facebook page announced that last night was going to be flip turn night, I almost considered not going.  I wanted to learn how to do flip turns, but everytime I tried to do them, I just managed to spin around in the water and swallow half the pool.  There was no flip, just turn.

I went to masters.  The first many times we tried flipping, I turned.  No legs over.  Ended up facing the wrong way.  Nothing attractive or useful about it.  But then we tried a couple times with toys -- noodles first, the pull buoys, and all of a sudden, I was able to do it!  I can flip!  Then the big test, flipping without toys.  Umm.  Not so much the first kajillion tries.  But eventually I figured it out and by the end of Masters, I had actually done a couple of flip turns.  And even close enough to the wall to push off, although I generally managed to push off too high, meaning I was pushing myself WAY underwater (like 7 feet under) and had a really hard time getting back to the surface...but I did it.  Between that and learning (and I should add air quotes to "learning") to do butterfly, I almost (ALMOST) feel like a real swimmer.  Now I just need to learn breast stroke.  And practice.  Practice.  Practice.