"Fear of water"

This is a famiy disease. No one in my family knows how to swim. My father has always been terrified of water. And this has got conveniently passed on to us. In fact, this december, when we went to the shores of the Arabian sea in Gujrat, he stated with disgust "I hate the sea"!!

Years back, when we were 4 or 5 yrs old, mom took us to a swimming pool to learn swimming. Since I was younger, I was just left with a tube around me, bobbing around in water with other tiny tots my age. And the trainer turned to my sister to teach her. But she ended up running all around the pool in her underclothes, with the trainer chasing behind her. Finally he gave up and we never returned !! But here, I must acknowledge that though my dear sis never swam again, she did go on to become a university level athlete!! :D

The first ( and maybe the last ) time our family spent a considerable amount of time in water was in a water park, about 5 to 6 years back. Initially, my dad was being very protective and making sure that all of us were holding each other's hands while in the dreaded liquid. But then we realised that the water was not very deep and there would be only a 0.0000001 percent chance that one of us might drown :D So, we had great fun and forgot our fear for the moment.

This fear of water is not too uncommon, but is quite uncommon!! So I have decided to tackle it. As a beginning, I went for my first swimming lesson today. The first lesson my friend ( read trainer) gave me was " Don't hate water ". So I tried to do that. I must say, I didn't learn much, but I did enjoy myself :) I guess thats more important.

Cheers