At the age of sixteen, many learn responsibility, how to be independent, and how to drive. I on the other hand, learned how to ride a bike, tie my own shoes, and swim. ‘Spring Break 2k13’ for me was spent learning the small essentials.
In Sweden, I lived on an island named Orust and spent most of my summers on the beach. However, I never actually learned how to swim, because it was not a priority. To some extent I could dog paddle my way around in the water when I could no longer tip-toe to keep my head above water (this being anywhere deeper than about four feet deep), but I wouldn’t consider it swimming- I looked much like a drowning cat. Don’t get me wrong, this didn’t keep me out of the water, I still went to the lake, pool, beach, or even water parks, where you could see me splashing around in the kiddy pool, staying as far away from the deep end as possible.
The fact that I couldn’t swim was not embarrassing until I told my trusted friends, Michelle Stoddart and Claire Peralta, who ridiculed me for being incapable of such an easy task. That is when Michelle made it her goal to teach me how to swim.
At first splashing around, trying to keep my head above the freezing water was exhausting. The “frog to stick to frog” motion seemed impossible and at this point I was sure I would die by drowning in a backyard pool. But Michelle kept pushing me and pushing me, until finally, I, Nathalie Kroll, at the age of sixteen, learned how to swim.
This now meant that I had two new things to learn, the first being how to tie my shoe. This was Claire’s mission. One day during newspaper, I had come up to her asking for help to tie my new combat boots. She gave me a stern look and asked, “Don’t you know how to tie your own shoe?” My answer shocked her, as the entire classroom was surprised that I couldn’t do something as simple as tie my own shoe. At first, all thought it was a joke. It’s not like I never tried to learn, it was just that whenever my mother tried to teach me it would result in me crying and banging my head into the wall because looping the laces together was in fact, too hard.
Yet Claire simplified it saying, “take the two laces, cross them over, go under the bridge, pull. Now make two bunny ears, cross them over, make the bunny go under the bridge, pull.” Suddenly, I knew how to tie my shoes, now making the entire process of getting dressed suddenly so much easier. I no longer had to wake my mother up to make her tie my shoes, and she was beyond proud of me.
The last thing I had to learn was how to ride a bike. This was the hardest of the three tasks. I had no training wheels, and my bike was a lot bigger than I. Not to mention the fact that I have the balance of a noodle, an over-cooked noodle at that. Michelle put me on her mother’s bike, holding on to the back of my seat as I carefully sat down, putting my feet on top of the pedals, carefully beginning to pedal forwards. The saying “Fall down seven times, stand up eight” applied to the situation more than one could imagine. Yet on the last try, after scraping every inch of my body, I was able to balance my body on two wheels, riding along with the wind, biking for the first time in my life.
It probably should be embarrassing that I could not do these things that many children learn while they are in elementary school. In reality, though, my childhood was still pretty great, and I now get the chance to learn these things from my best friends, creating memories that will last me a long time. I guess now, the things I’ll have to learn are how to drive, cartwheel, and maybe what’s going on in my chemistry class.
