Justin Hawkins - Adult Swim

 

 

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. [audience laughter] I didn't know how to swim. 

 

[chuckles] The week prior, I had stared at my computer screen for 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. [audience laughter] 

 

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. 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 hand write me a note to shamefully hand to the teacher excusing me from getting into the pool for a fictitious chlorine allergy. [audience laughter] 

 

Every week I would watch my friends swim and have a good time. And that lasted for five years until I switched schools. I was pretty set on the fact that going forward, I was going to 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 could probably go another 30. But this was much more than about learning how to swim for me. 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 and it was-- I was led to believe that everything was dangerous, everything came with risk and consequences. 

 

If it was thundering and 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. I had to be afraid of so many things even on the smallest scale of risk. 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. 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. “Are you the teacher?” the parents asked. [audience laughter] “No, I'm not the teacher. Just trying to learn how to swim and not be a weirdo about it,” [audience laughter] 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?” [audience laughter] 

 

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 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. [audience laughter] However, that's based on demand and availability.” [audience laughter] 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. [audience laughter] 

 

As soon as these classes started, these kids were fricking Michael Phelps. [audience laughter] They were merpeople. [audience laughter] 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. [audience laughter] 

 

The following week though, I was determined to do better. 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. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

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, 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 it's just like, “Hey, how are you feeling about this dude?” Like, “I'm about to shit my pants here.” [audience laughter] He was 13, by the way. [audience laughter] He just looked at me with a blank stare and he was like, “Well, um, my mom said that if we all do it, she's going to get us all pizza afterwards.” [audience laughter] 

 

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? I'm good. I'm good. I'm going to pass on this.” 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.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “No, no. I don't want to do this. And this isn't a Disney movie.” [audience laughter] 

 

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.” And then, this jerk grabbed my keys [audience laughter] and tossed them into the deep end. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

I dove in. [audience laughter] 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. [audience laughter] I showed those keys to everybody and I said a lot of things I probably shouldn't have said in front of those kids, [audience laughter] and they all cheered. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

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. [audience laughter] That summer, I swam in the ocean for the first time. Thank you very much.