Justin Hawkins
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
I stood there in the water waiting for my swim lessons to begin. I was pretty nervous. I started to see parents usher their kids to the pool and then take a seat off to the side. I started looking for my own parents, but they weren't there because I was 33 years old. I didn't know how to swim.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
The week prior, I had stared at my computer screen for like four hours debating back and forth as to whether I should purchase these swim lessons that I found on Groupon, which I guess if you're going to put your life in somebody's hands, you should do so at a discounted rate.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
Every moment of indecision that I stared at my computer, I kept reliving these moments of great fear where I almost drowned as a kid, followed by these experiences of failing to learn how to swim, which led to my mom ultimately deciding that swimming was off limits for me.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
To make matters worse as a kid, my school would bus to the local YMCA every week for gym and swim class, and my mom every week would handwrite me a note to shamefully hand to the teacher, excusing me from getting into the pool for a fictitious chlorine allergy. Every week I would watch my friends swim and have a good time and that lasted for like five years until I switched schools.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
I was pretty set on the fact that going forward I was gonna have to scroll through a Rolodex of excuses about why I never wanted to go to the beach or to somebody's pool party. I could have been having a lot of fun. So I had gone 30 years without knowing how to swim I'd probably go another 30. But this was much more than about learning how to swim for me.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
I was greatly loved as a kid, but any fundamental growth that I should have had, it was severely stunted by the fact that I grew up in a home with a parent that was mentally unstable. I was led to believe that everything was dangerous, everything came with risk and consequences.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
If it was thundering or lightning out, me and every one of my siblings literally every time had to line up in an entryway in our house just in case the house got struck by lightning and collapsed. We were allowed outside to play, but only for a few minutes at a time just in case we got bit by a bug with a disease or kidnapped. Like, it was bad.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
And I had to be afraid of so many things, even on the smallest scale of risk. And I ended up missing out on a lot of stuff. The greatest decision I ever made in my life was to start seeing a therapist. And it wasn't until then that I started to give myself a crash course on life in my 30s.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
When I started therapy, my therapist and I came up with a long, long list of everything I had never experienced or done and swimming was on that list. I didn't need to know how to swim, but I had to conquer this fear in order to put my other anxieties on notice. So I purchased these swim lessons and the teacher was late the first day. Which led to a lot of questions from parents and kids.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
Are you the teacher, the parents ask? No, I'm not the teacher. Just trying to learn how to swim and not be a weirdo about it. Which led to the kids asking me, why don't you know how to swim and why do you have a beard on your face and your back? Though I had called prior to this to avoid this very situation because the description on these adult swim classes said ages 12 and up.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
The voice on the other end of the phone, which clearly was going through puberty said, relax, don't worry about it. We put like ages with like ages. However, that's based on demand and availability. Well, demand and availability led to me being stuck in a class with a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old, and two 15-year-olds. Oh God, kill me now.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
As soon as these classes started, these kids were frickin' Michael Phelps. They were merpeople. Like, not beginners at all. The whole first day was a huge disaster for me, which I choked on every ounce of pool water. And for the most part, I just clung to the side. And at the end of the first lesson, one of these kids ran off with my bathing cap.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
The following week though, I was determined to do better and I was very encouraged by my therapist who told me I needed to see this through. I was also pretty pumped up by the fact that before every swim lesson, right before I got into the pool, I would be binge watching every motivational movie speech I could find on my phone because Goonies never say die.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
And then oddly, over the course of the next few sessions, I started doing strokes in the pool that I had never done before, and it was coming almost naturally to me. I was seeing progress in something that I had never seen before, and it felt good. It felt really good. From where I stood, the fear seemed like it was gone. But it wasn't. It was just waiting.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
Because on the last day, graduation day, the instructor took a ring and tossed it into the deep end of the pool and everybody had to go down and get it. I started freaking out. Just like a best friend I hadn't seen in a long time, fear and I picked up right where we left off. I leaned over to the kid next to me and I was just like, hey, how are you feeling about this, dude?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
Like, I'm about to shit my pants here. He was 13, by the way. He just looked at me with a blank stare, and he was like, well, my mom said that if we all do it, she's gonna get us all pizza afterwards. He dove in and popped right back up with the ring, and it was my turn next. I stared down through the water at the ring and whatever demise waited for me down there. And I was like, you know what?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
I'm good, I'm good. Like I'm gonna pass on this. And I went to the instructor and I was just like, hey, I'm good. I've come further than I ever thought I could with this. And I could be perfectly satisfied to walk away not diving down there. And then oddly a couple of the parents off to the side were like, come on, Justin, you got this. And I was like, no, no, I don't want to do this.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
And this isn't a Disney movie. So I grabbed my towel, and I grabbed the keys to my locker, and I told the instructor, thank you so much for everything that you've done for me to get me to this point. And he's like, listen, Justin, don't worry about the ring, okay? It's fine. What you should be worried about is the keys to your locker.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
And then this jerk grabbed my keys and tossed them into the deep end. I dove in. I could barely see, but I felt those keys, and I bolted straight back up to the surface, came out of the water unscathed, baptized anew by chlorine. I showed those keys to everybody, and I said a lot of things I probably shouldn't have said in front of those kids, and they all cheered.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Rites of Passage
I can't describe to you the wave of satisfaction that came over me and the feeling of relief that I had finally slayed this fear. I never told anybody about what I had achieved that day or the awesome pizza party we had afterwards. That summer, I swam in the ocean for the first time. Thank you very much.