The Birth Of A Phobia (Or Two)

My best friend in the third grade was a popular boy named Joe. I only make note of his popularity because it was in such stark contrast to how alienated I was at school. Far back as I can remember, kids didn’t like me much. I was too shy, too weird, I had wheezy lungs and eczema running down the length of both arms. I wasn’t particularly athletic or cute or outgoing and I mostly kept to myself in the back of the room. One day, Joe was assigned the seat next to me and we became very good friends for the remainder of that school year. To this day, Joe’s house is the only house that I ever spent the night at beyond my own. He was my first good friend.

So fast forward six or seven months. It’s Joe’s birthday party and he invites all of his friends. The house was full of popular, athletic kids from wealthy families and we were all congregated at Joe’s pool to start a scavenger hunt. I distinctly remember watching everybody talk to one another as I sat on a little chair against the railing, desperately wanting to be part of the conversation but not knowing how to introduce myself. This would become a major theme in my life, but this is the very first time I actually remember doing it. I was nervous that the other kids weren’t going to like me, or worse yet, be outwardly mean to me. Children can be vile, after all, and I was just small enough that I’d have been an easy target. So I just stayed back and listened as Joe’s dad explained the rules of the aforementioned scavenger hunt.

I was excited about it until I discovered that one of the clues led you directly to the bottom of the pool. I MIGHT have been a hair or two above three and a half feet tall and that pool was a good five feet at it’s shallowest point. Worse yet, I didn’t know how to swim (still don’t, by the way).

So we were all standing up there and I see the clue at the bottom of the pool. Nobody else does. My first instinct is to go and tell Joe, but he’s the head of the congregation and they’re all searching on the deck like little idiots. I wanted to scream.

“Dude, I see it. There’s a plastic tube right there. I can’t swim so you have to go get it. But go get it!” Instead, I stood at the edge and watched, hoping somebody would see me standing there and follow my lead to the bottom of the ocean (or pool, whatever, might as well have been the same thing).

Next thing I know, I hit the bottom of the pool and scrape the tube with the underside of my feet. I look up and see a group of kids pointing and laughing, patting the tallest one on the back, and try to reach the surface. I can’t. I flail my arms, kick my legs, contort my little body upward, but to no avail. I’m stuck there at the bottom with the clue in the black tube. I panic, get a lung full of chlorinated water and panic even more. This was the first time I ever thought that, just maybe, I could die. The kids were still up there, still patting the back of the jerk that pushed me in.

Joe’s dad eventually jumped in and saved me and the kids all stood around as I vomited an endless stream of fluid from the chair I never should have gotten up from in the first place. This might have well have been the gallows, because now not only was I the lone weird kid that Joe inexplicably hung out with — now I was the weird kid that almost drowned and threw up at Joe’s party.

The result of which was damn near instantaneous. The popular kids there outright ignored me until the parents disappeared and then they all took their shots at me. Some talked about how stupid I looked at the bottom of the pool. Others talked about how loud my asthmatic breathing patterns were. And a few just gave me a few looks that said, “I don’t know you, but I know I don’t like you.” Eventually, under the pressure of those kids, Joe too turned on me and started chiming in with them. I held my own and dealt with it the best I could, but I eventually had Joe’s dad take me back home.

“At least there’s nobody here to make fun of me or laugh as I drown.” I probably thought.

And that’s the story that I told at the pool last night. I kept it short, excluded the more revealing pieces of the narrative, but the meat and potatoes were there. The only reason I’m telling this story here right now is because it prompted a few questions beyond my fear of water. Firstly, what would have happened that day if I’d summoned the courage to be outgoing on that chair? What if his friends would have accepted me had I not been so shut off and reserved? Even if I’d gotten pushed into that pool and the story played out the same way and only changed after the fact; like what if his friends were concerned or friendly to me after that? Would I still have such a fear of water? And even more important than that — would I find it as hard to communicate with people now? Maybe this day, a vivid one that I remember so strongly, was absolutely crucial to the development and road I eventually walked down.

Maybe not, too. Maybe I was just friends with the wrong kid and I put too much stock in the experience. Maybe it doesn’t hold any water at all.

But maybe it does, too. Wouldn’t that be something?