Today was my glorious return to the beauty shop! My hair has never been happier.

While there, I veered the discussion towards swimming, as I always do. Hair and swimming are inextricably linked, unfortunately. In fact, my daughter was supposed to have the hair appointment today, but I switched with her, because she had lifeguarding class today.

I mentioned the class to the ladies at the beauty shop, and one of them mentioned the concept of ‘going down for the last time.’ She talked about how important it is to get children in swimming lessons, because inevitably somebody who can’t swim will find himself (it’s always a ‘he’ in these stories) at the bottom of the pool–after having gone down for the last time.

We talked about my question of treading water. What is it about treading water that two people can do exactly the same movement but one is treading and the other is drowning? I got an answer: fear. Fear is the difference between floating and sinking. How the scared person tenses up and is unable to make treading happen.

I remember when my daughter first learned to tread water. She was 7 and skinny as a pole. She didn’t get cold in the water though; she was too busy moving a mile a minute. She had the fastest treading I’d ever seen! I had thought she was scared, but that was just her speed.

I would like to replace the tragic drowning stories with funny stories of children who finally *got* treading. And I’d love to hear more stories of grown ups who decided to learn how to swim, too, rather than sending their kids down to get swim lessons. Because if they fall off the boat, or whatever, they could go down for the last time just as easily as a child.

Maybe even easier.