So began the summer of our training. We were forbidden to dog-paddle; we were forbidden to hold our noses. Flotation devices were not allowed. Water wings were a sign that a child needed to be picked off by predators in order to strengthen the herd. Rules about waiting a half hour after lunch to go swimming were to be as strenuously disobeyed as the laws of Bill Clinton. Above all, we were never allowed to “ease into the pool.” He believed that if a child was plopped into the water without ceremony, some bone-deep mammalian reflex would take over and its arms and legs would spontaneously erupt
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