SMC

Last week while I was in New York I visited my best friend from third grade. She and her husband recently bought an apartment in Brooklyn across the street from Prospect Park. When she told me they bought a place she explained it was small and that it had a roof top garden. It turns out it was much bigger than I expected and the roof top garden has a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. And sure it is a one bedroom, but she has the park across the street as her backyard for her baby girl. After all, that is how most of us grew up, in an apartment and in my case Santa Monica College was my backyard. My parents lived across the College when I was born. Our apartment faced the football field and when I was two years old it was there where I took my first swim lesson and never stopped after that. As the years went by, I completed all the regular lessons available even Synchronized swimming classes.

During the summer the pool at Santa Monica College was my camp and I swam there twice a day. The College ended up becoming my second home. I know that campus like the back of my hand. I swam with my friends in the afternoon and took naps on the wet deck in between play time. Once September rolled around and I had to go back to school and take my school picture, I always came out super dark from all the hours spent at the pool.

My summer routine was always the same, every morning I walked up the block in my bathing suit with a towel wrapped tightly around my small body to my swimming class. As soon as I entered the Women’s locker room the smell of chlorine filled the air. I rinsed my small body and walked out to the deck towards my teacher Lisa. She was the head lifeguard and she was BEAUTIFUL. She wore a red bathing suit, her skin was the color of gold, her hair was blonde and her front tooth was chipped. She stood on the deck above as she paced back and forth while she explained the strokes. For the next hour I practiced my drills. I felt free in the water. I would pretend I was a mermaid or an Olympian swimmer going for the gold. I never wanted that hour to end. I knew what would be waiting when I returned home. The short walk home down 17^th street was dreadful. My Stepdad would be waiting for me with even more drills. Math drills that is. I didn’t understand why he thought I would want to spend my summer learning multiplication. No one asked me if that is what I wanted to do. If they would have asked me they would have learned that I much rather would have been at the pool spending even more endless hours swimming and observing Lisa hold the white megaphone to her mouth and shout to the kids “No running on the deck!” I wanted to be just like her. Instead, I had to practice boring math. Every day after I had showered off the chlorine and hung my towel and bathing suit outside on the black railing, I made myself my old time favorite snack of tuna fish with saltine crackers, then grabbed the paperwork my Stepdad laid out for me and locked myself in my room. I was not allowed out until I was ready to be quizzed. As soon as I closed the door behind me anxiety and panic flooded my small body. The pressure was too much. I was never going to master multiplication I thought to myself. It was too hard. When my Mom divorced my Father my Brother and I got shuffled back and forth from Salinas to Los Angeles a bit while my Mom tried to figure things out. My Mom enrolled us into the same school our cousin’s attended and on the first day of school we had a math quiz. I had not learned any math and felt confused looking at all the numbers and lines on the paper. I didn’t look around because I didn’t want the teacher to think I was cheating so I kept my head down and looked at my paper wishing the answers would appear if I looked hard enough. I could tell everyone was answering the questions. So I answered too. The next day I received my quiz back. It had a BIG red F. It was over between us. FOREVER.

My favorite book (that I had found at the laundry mat) “Elvis and Me” sat on my bedside table. I played this game every day. “Elvis and Me” stared at me as I ate my tuna fish and saltine crackers on the bedroom floor with the paperwork next to me. I looked away and then found myself looking back at the book and then reaching for it. The book was much more interesting and it didn’t matter to me that I had already read the book three times. My Stepdad must have thought I was busy studying, but instead I read and waited for him to leave for work at 2:30. I knew every single sound to look out for to indicate he was preparing for work. I knew the time he went into the bathroom to shower. I knew how long his showers lasted and I made sure he was off the property before I made my escape. As soon as he closed the front door behind him, I pressed my face against the rusted bars that surrounded my bedroom window. I turned my eyes far in its corners as I followed him to the parking lot. I watched as he turned the black Yamaha scooter on and stood next to it while he fastened his helmet. I waited, never blinking; my eyes hurting from straining them so hard. He would finally sit on the seat and back up the scooter and out the parking lot, but I still waited until he emerged at the top of the alley ready to make a left onto Delaware. It wasn’t until I saw him and the scooter disappear towards 20^th street that I made my move. With my bathing suit already on, flip flops on my feet, quarter in my hand to pay the entrance fee, I made dash for the front door. I grabbed the towel that hung outside on the black railing already dry from the morning swim and ran up the street to meet up with my friends at the pool. I never learned my multiplication, but summer wasn’t about learning math it was about being free to daydream of becoming a lifeguard at Santa Monica Beach.

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