The Springboard Diving Fiasco

Yes, it was a fiasco. But I've been asked to share, and so I must share it in a public forum so that that truth can be exposed, as my breasts almost were. Ah, but I'm already resorting to cheap tricks to draw in your attention... is it working?

I had that one friend that everyone does or should have freshman year---the one who really pushes you to do wild and crazy things, the one who crosses the line, the one who persuades you to cross the line, the one who drags you body and soul across the line---I had one of those and her name was Magoo. My name was Magoo, too, come to think of it, but that seems like another story for another time.

At the beginning of winter semester, Magoo persuaded me to take a springboard diving class with her. It didn't take much persuasion---she just told me how cool we'd look during the summer after our freshman year, going to pools and performing flips and twists and all those things that everyone never knew they aspired to do, too.

We added the class after it had already started; we only missed the first day. We went to the RB and got our bathing suits---Magoo was a size 2. I was a size 12. That doesn't matter to the story at all, but since I was painfully aware of the difference every day, you may as well be, too.

At the time, all students had to wear university-issue swim suits. What a disaster it would be if students wore a suit that was an inch too high in the thighs or an inch too low in the chest! So they made us wear theirs. Theirs were used, old, falling-apart and semi-transparent swim suits. Later in the semester, Magoo would one day come out of the water after her first dive and be shooed back into the change room by the diving instructor who would yell, "It's totally see-through! I can see everything! Go back and get a new suit! Go back and get a new suit!"

When Magoo and I awkwardly stepped into the pool area and found our class, we approached the teacher and said, "We added your class online. Is it okay if we join?" She glared at us from beneath her mass of red hair and sneered. "Do I have a choice?"

Gulp.

The first day, she had Magoo and I practice what all the students had learned the class period before. It was not so slow in coming. In fact, thirty minutes later, I think that Magoo and I were quite pro at Step-Step-STEP-and-bounce!-ing off the springboard.

After our first class, Magoo scheduled a private tutoring session with her friend who introduced her to the class in the first place. She raved to me about him---he had taken the class and he did so many cool tricks! We were treading water in the pool when I heard Magoo welcome her friend. I turned around to see him and saw all three hundred pounds of him (I am not actually exaggerating at this point). The man was massive and fat. "He," I thought, "can springboard dive?" Our fat tutor got on the board and showed us a few things to practice to get ahead of the game. We followed his instructions and even learned a few things. Then he busted out all the tricks. The man started flipping, twisting, twirling, and spinning off that board like an enchanted hippo. It was incredible (no, really---unbelieveable!), and Magoo and I were psyched as ever for our turn to learn the moves that he so effortlessly made.

And I think that the most effective way for me to tell what really happened is just to say that our hopes and dreams crashed about as hard and fast as my body did into the water twenty times an hour, two days a week. Magoo and I were the only ones in the class who never actually learned how to springboard dive. I remember one particular day.

After each class, we changed and then exchanged our used suit for the suit that we would use next class. One day, I was handed a particularly old, misshapen, and worn-out swim suit.

"Don't you have anything better than this?" I asked, disappointedly looking at the rag I had been handed. "I mean, this is supposed to hide my nakedness and all..."

Without looking at the stock, the worker replied that it was the only one. I think that's what she told anyone who tried to get a better bathing suit. She probably thought to herself that people were foolish for demanding the best, or the newest. The old suits worked just fine.

But I remembered to bring my own suit to wear underneath the transparent sham of a suit that she had handed me that day, and the next class period, I showed up wearing two suits---mine underneath, and BYU's modest suit on top.

I doubt that the two suits affected my performance much. Chances were that had I only been wearing the one suit, I still would have dived that fateful dive in the exact same way... I remember hitting the water and realizing that my breasts had actually taken most of the impact of the failed dive. I surfaced and limply wiggled over to where Magoo was holding on to the edge of the pool, waiting her turn to dive.

"Magoo," I said, with barely a voice. "Have you seen my left breast? Because I think I may have left it floating over there." I pointed to the middle of the pool where I had flopped ten seconds earlier. Then, to ensure that they both were still there, Magoo and I looked at my chest.

The BYU-approved suit had ripped horizontally, nipple to nipple. I stared down at what appeared, in my delirium, to be a gaping mouth, eager to proclaim to the world What Had Happened.

I grabbed the lower jaw and started making the tear speak: "My, my, my," it said, "BYU has gone mighty lax on its standards!"

The instructor glared at me again (it seemed to have become a semi-weekly ritual---I'd screw up every dive I tried to make, and she would curse the day she ever let me take her class). I wore the torn suit for the rest of the class---afterall, the suit that I had brought (my own---which had a neckline higher than BYU's and thigh-lines lower) covered me more than adequately.

I received an A in the class, in case you're wondering. At the end of the semester, we had to write a paragraph about what grade we thought we deserved and why. I wrote a dissertation. I pointed out many solid reasons for why I deserved an A+---among them was the fact that I endured more pain than anyone else in the class, because those who could dive, didn't experience as many back flops, side flops, belly flops, and---yes, it must be said---enemas as I had. And my pain wasn't worth a C or a B. I concluded simply:

The only reason I wouldn't deserve an A+ in this class is the fact that I simply cannot dive. Taking that into consideration, I'll settle for an A.