I've been learning to swim these past few months, a period during which, by coincidence, my son has been learning to walk. In fact, it was a close-run thing for a while as to which of us would let go of the furniture first; and in that sense, his efforts were an inspiration to me.
Watching him attempt those first precarious steps, his eyes wide with excitement, I experienced a profound emotion that every father knows. Yes, I mean the male competitive urge. There was no way I was going to let this little squirt beat me, I vowed, as I redoubled my determination and headed off for the weekly lesson at the pool.
By Christmas, however, I was forced to concede defeat in the race. The child was walking victory laps of the living-room by then, and I was revising my ambitions downwards. I'm now determined to learn to swim before he does. And I believe I have a sporting chance.
Progress has been slow to date, although I have made important strides. The first big breakthrough happened on only my third night, when I experienced the tremendous freedom of being able to emerge from the dressing room in a tight pair of Speedos, and not feel embarrassed. The same night, I let go of the safety bar and floated. I was on a high.
But learning the actual swimming strokes has been hard. It's an incredibly complex activity, requiring you to move all your arms and legs - that's a total of four limbs - simultaneously while, as if that wasn't enough, also remembering not to breathe when under water.
I find I can memorise the not-breathing and either the arm or leg movements; but when I attempt all three together, I have the buoyancy of a piano. Nevertheless, I was happy enough with my progress, until last week, when two diminutive females - complete beginners, they said - joined the class, and reached my level of proficiency in the first halfhour.
Now, for technical reasons we don't need to get into here, women are more naturally buoyant than men. But Fungi the dolphin could not have learned the front crawl quicker than this pair, and I found that merely thinking about them had a detrimental effect on my ability to float.
Things got worse this week, thanks to the backstroke. As when using public washroom facilities, women usually attend swimming classes in twos, and the backstroke is where it pays off. Launching yourself rearwards from the wall for the first time, you need a person you can trust behind, to help rebalance you if and (in my case) when you sink. But since I was the only one apart the amphibian twins who had never done the backstroke, they had to provide back-up for me too.
This exercise requires an act of faith. The two women had complete faith in each other, and after some minor but graceful difficulties, were quickly able to float face up. But when it was my turn to launch, I expected them to get well out of the way, which is what I'd have done in the circumstances. In fact they bravely intervened to save me, as I sank like a big eejit and nearly drowned them both.
Swimming is all about trust, really: trusting yourself, the water, the laws of physics (I did chemistry for the Leaving, naturally), and so on. But the older you get, the harder it can be to make that leap.
It's touching to see the absolute faith a child has, by contrast. Like all children, when my son learned to walk, he did so in spurts from one place of safety to another. The destination was usually a parent, whom he knew - he absolutely knew - would be waiting with open arms.
Sometimes, a child will choose the most inconvenient moments to do this. You could be standing in the kitchen holding, say, a kettle of boiled water in one hand and a trayful of John Rocha-designed Waterford Crystal glasses in the other when - oh, Jesus Christ! - you realise the baby has launched himself across the floor and is bearing down on you with outstretched arms and a smile.
AND it doesn't stop there. Once walking, some age old instinct tells the child that the next step in his development is to climb onto the coffee table and throw himself off the deep end, knowing you'll catch him. You may be in the next room when he jumps, but his confidence in you is total.
I'm going to have to develop some of this in the pool, clearly. In the meantime, I expect to endure further humiliations, like our occasional "fun" relay races, in which swimmers of varying ability are organised into competing teams to spice things up.
This should appeal to my male competitive urge, and it normally would. But all my years of playing football - honing the basic competitive skills of cheating, lying and bending the rules - seem useless in the pool. The harder I try, it appears, the more I flounder in the backwash of the stronger swimmers.
Still, I'm not giving up. I'm going to learn to swim, dammit, and when I do I'm going to beat everyone else in the pool. That's my general plan anyway. But if I can't do it, my son will.
Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie
