My Death-Defying Leap

Even when you fall on your face … you’re still moving forward.

I looked down and stared into a black void, an abyss of pure horror.

Only one thought went through my mind: This is it ... I am about to die.

While my eyes may have taken in the blue, shimmering pool water that undulated below in the mid-morning light, in the very core of my being I was certain that my days on this earthly plane were about to end …

… with a resounding splat.

The diving board on which I stood – and trembled in terror – was, to my 5-year-old senses, thousands of feet above the pool deck. And several adults far, far below kept screaming up at me the same words, over and over: “LET’S GO! C’MON! JUMP!”

I couldn’t turn back and climb down the ladder. Other young boys were waiting, some perhaps as terrified as I felt. Why I didn’t drop dead of fright, right then and there, remains a mystery.

Live or die, I knew I had to jump.

I just wasn’t sure if I could.

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Earlier that summer, my mother enrolled my brother, Jeff, and me in the City of Buena Park’s Tadpole swimming class. Dad, an avid body surfer and snorkeler who’d left the Bronx to embrace Southern California and its vast ocean, felt it was high time that his offspring learned how to be safe and comfortable in the water. (Our sister, Flori, was a bit too young to start swimming lessons.) I was both giddy with excitement and oddly terrified at the prospect of this new adventure.

I needn’t have worried.

I loved everything about the Tadpole class: the way the water foamed and frothed whenever we practiced our frantic kicking as our tiny hands gripped the ceramic poolside tiles; the delightful screams that came from the gaggle of young aquanauts-to-be as we practiced new swimming techniques; my mother’s glorious, sunlit smile as Jeff and I absorbed the instructions of the lifeguard who ran the class; even the caustic chlorine smell that grew in intensity moments before my head dipped below the surface.

After several Saturdays of instruction, the Tadpoles were ready for their final exam: swim across the width of the public pool. This involved following our instructor – to me a larger-than-life Fish God, maybe even bigger than Daddy – as he carefully led us across the water, one by one, while he slowly backpedaled. The far side of the pool beckoned in the distance as I started my marathon adventure, but I managed to focus on the lifeguard’s chest as I frantically kicked and paddled, until the moment he quickly stepped aside … and there I was, a proud little munchkin who’d barely – but successfully – navigated his watery rite of passage.

I did it! I thought as I grinned at the instructor. I can swim! I’d never before felt such a powerful feeling of accomplishment.

As my brother and I were drying off a few minutes later, another lifeguard approached us.

“Guys, we’re not done yet,” he said.

I dropped my Spiderman towel, unsure of what was coming next.

“If you guys want to graduate – and be real Tadpoles – there’s something else you have to do.”

What he said next made my brother smile in gleeful anticipation. And it made me want to melt and drip into the pool, to vanish for all eternity.

In order to complete the class, all the boys – not the girls – were required to jump off the pool’s diving board.

(Why, pray tell, were the girls exempt? That remains a Mystery of the Cosmos. Maybe geneticists back in the mid-60s determined that children saddled with one X and one Y chromosome were somehow more buoyant than the XX sisterhood. If that sounds absurd, please remember that some doctors back then smoked in front of their patients.)

In any event, I wasn’t sure what would happen once I’d flung myself from the security of the board, situated 3 feet over the water, and knife into the depths. We’d been taught to thrive and play on the surface, not navigate the silent world below. Would I sink? If I did, would someone save me? What would it feel like to drown? Would it hurt?

I glanced to my right over at the dive board. And I shuddered.

“Can’t they skip this part?” my mother inquired.

“Not if they want to complete the class,” the lifeguard said. “Both of your boys are very comfortable in the water. They’ll do fine on the high-dive.”

The high-dive…

The HIGH-dive?!

Surviving a hellish dance with death on the low-dive was one thing. But from where I stood, wide-eyed and quivering, the high-dive soared beyond the clouds into the stratosphere. How adult Olympians survived a plunge from this height was beyond comprehension.

My brother, one year older, jumped in line and in mere minutes was happily babbling away about his high-altitude jump.

As for me, I was too terrified to even protest, muted by the grave situation. That my mother didn’t object made me think that somehow, some way, I’d survive this. I had to trust her.

As I was climbing the ladder into the heavens (the board was actually 10 feet off the deck), I kept turning and looking back at Mommy, who smiled in encouragement. Finally stepping out onto the board, I managed to walk out toward the end … before backing up.

That’s when a few of the adults began bellowing up at me: “JUMP! YOU CAN DO IT! IT’S FUN!”

I stared down at the water toward a painful annihilation.

Yearning for comfort, I wanted to embrace Mommy, to embrace anything at that point.

So I embraced the water.

Reaching my tiny hands toward the shimmering blue below, I plummeted head-first off the board … and landed on my face.

Years later, my brother, who witnessed this fall from grace, said that when I impacted the water, the entire crowd – all the children, the parents, the lifeguards and other staffers – rose to their feet in unison and gave a loud, collective “OOOH!”

I managed to bob to the surface and grab a long metal pole thrust in my direction before I was unceremoniously dragged poolside.

I’d survived.

But I hadn’t graduated. I wasn’t an official Tadpole.

They made me do it again.

“Let’s go, Larry,” another lifeguard said in an encouraging tone. “You can do this. I know you can.”

Now more desperate than ever, my 5-year-old self suddenly remembered what the lifeguard had said: only boys had to go off the high-dive.

“But I’m a girl!” I screamed as I was directed toward the high-dive.

“I’m a girl!” I bellowed as I climbed the Ladder of Doom.

“I’M!! A!! GIRRRRL!!”

But nobody believed me. Because I was just a terrified little boy …

… who once again face planted from the high-dive.

My mother later hugged me and told me she was so proud of my courage, how I faced my fear and successfully completed the Tadpole swimming class. Her loving acknowledgement soothed my frayed nerves and added to my sense of accomplishment.

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You’d think that someone who’d suffered through this kind of experience would be forever turned off by anything water-related. Through the years, however, I took up body surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, lap swimming and windsurfing.

And whenever my mom or brother would remind me of my flailing plummets from the high-dive – and of my sudden “gender reappraisal” in the face of terror – we’d laugh.

Because, well, it was funny. (“But I’m a girl!!”) It still is.

Years later, when I was going through a trying period and doubted my ability to take risks, my brother counseled me with the following words: “Even when you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward.”

And although I literally fell on my face – twice – many decades ago, knowing that it never diminished my love of the water fills me with a glimmer of joy.

No 5-year-old could ever realize that the path of growth and success is anything but linear, that personal evolution is peppered with dips, speed bumps, screw-ups and, yes, even spectacular face plants.

Climbing up a dive board is only part of the journey. At some point, you still have to jump.

Today, whenever I get the chance, I thoroughly enjoy climbing a 10-foot-high springboard and knifing into the liquid ecstasy below.

But, rest assured, I always do it feet first.

Then I swim poolside and climb out, ready to do it again.

I keep moving forward.

Many thanks to Matt Cyr, Dana Allen and Kathy Ayers for their very helpful feedback while this essay was being developed.