Going Swimmingly

Flashbacks to childhood trauma always result in cheap entertainment, which is why I knew this week I would have to write about my turn in the dunk tank.

It started out as a way for the sophomore class at my school to raise some money during the homecoming football game. But when I climbed in, it immediately turned into something more sinister, basically an opportunity for thousands of angry people around the community to release some pent-up hatred by repeatedly humiliating and degrading a tub of water.

Sitting on that platform, waiting for that first plunge, took me back to one of the diving boards at the Bangor YWCA pool, where as a fourth-grader I fidgeted and shook for several minutes before the menacing swim instructor nearly threw me in the water.

I guess this is what constituted a “swim class” back in the 1980s. As part of the “non-swimmers” group, this aquatic genius had allowed me to fart around in the shallow end for five weeks, dog paddling and doing fruity little kicking drills while holding onto the side of the pool.

Then, on the last day of class, I was supposed to fearlessly dive into the deep end as though it were as natural and intuitive as picking a scab.

Everyone else gleefully hopped into the water, wearing only their swimsuits. I put myself at the end of one line, and another pathetic little guy named Heath kept himself at the end of the other, each of us armored in enough Styrofoam to close a municipal landfill.

When our turns came, Heath and I stood on our respective diving boards, stricken by the simple facts of the situation: breathing was necessary to continue existence, and being underwater reportedly made breathing just about impossible.

Incredulous, the instructor told everyone we were “making a mountain out of a mole hill.” He strode onto Heath’s diving board and tossed him flailing and screaming into the water.

It took me only a second to decide that if my lungs were going to fill with water anyway, I might as well avoid Heath’s humiliation. So I grabbed my nose and hopped in.

The worst part is, that pinhead probably went home thinking he had taught us how to swim. In reality, I didn’t touch the water again for years. To this day, I still won’t go under without holding my nose, and while I can maneuver in deep water when necessary, I generally avoid it, being about as graceful and efficient a swimmer as your average Dodge Durango.

In how many other potentially lethal situations do we expect kids to learn by just jumping in and learning to cope? Imagine if we taught people to drive that way. “Just pay attention and wear your seat belt, and you’ll be fine. Now GET IN THE CAR.”

Fortunately, my inadequate swimming skills were not much of a problem in the dunk tank, since it was only four feet deep. I was able to use some of the larger ice cubes to keep myself afloat until my feet found the bottom.

Overall, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t know what the big deal is about throwing a ball to dump somebody in the water. It’s not like I didn’t need the bath.

The kids had a good time, and the whole experience forced me to reflect on a character-shaping experience from my past, and realize, after much introspection, that I could eek out another 600 words this week by whining about it.

Whew!

Top Secret! Do Not Read!

I don’t understand how leaks happen.

I’m not talking about plumbing leaks. Everyone knows that plumbing leaks result from your toddler putting live ammunition into the garbage disposal.

But there’s really no excuse for informational leaks, because there is a well-known, proven strategy for keeping secrets from spreading:

Don’t make them available to anyone.

Best-selling author Stephanie Meyer has her tights in a twist because details from her new book, “Midnight Sun,” have surfaced on the Internet.

This should be no big deal, because you can only write so many vampire romance novels before they all start to sound the same, anyway.

But it’s big news to some people, regardless. According to Reuters news service, Meyer made some “early drafts” available to a few “trusted” people, such as her editor, her parents, and her drug-addicted, gossip-obsessed, destitute ex-hairdresser.

Some people just can’t hold on to classified information, and Stephanie Meyer is apparently one of them.

I have some suggestions for her, and for anyone else who just can’t bear to keep anything “close to the vest.” Memorize these foolproof techniques so you’ll always be able to get a secret off your chest without facing any consequences:

1) Write down the secret, fold it up, and try to get Wal-Mart to sell it in the toy section. By the time anyone gets the fortress of packaging undone, and frees the paper from the relentless clenches of those stupid screws and plastic ties that turn Christmas morning into an agonizing Houdini ritual, all the concerned parties will be dead anyway.

2) Buy advertising on a sports pre-game show. I guarantee nobody will hear it, because everything blends together. (“You’re listening to the Chrysler-Lexus-Jeep-Peugeot-Doritos-Carl’s Taxidermy-Brian Is Sleeping With Sarah’s Best Friend-Pre-Game-Show, on the Shaw’s-WRKO Red Sox Radio Network.”)

3) Jot it down on the owner’s manual of a new gas grille, right next to where it says “WARNING.”

4) Have it printed in your town’s annual report, on the one page everyone always skips over (“Budget Information”).

5) Three words: Public Radio Telethon.

But in this age of piracy, even these reliable strategies are not entirely guaranteed to work.

Ms. Meyer is learning what the music industry has understood for more than a decade: the Internet has neutered the concept of intellectual property. It is no longer possible to tell for sure where anything came from.

There’s nothing to stop some lowlife annelid from copying this column and pasting it on his or her own blog for some incomprehensible personal gain.

Or, for all you know, maybe I stole these very words from some obscure website you’ve never heard of, and am now selling it as my own work.

Given the number of people who read my column regularly (nine, if you count family and editors), it would be virtually impossible for anyone to find out.

If high school term papers are any indication, the Stephanie Meyers of the world might as well resign themselves to the fact that anything they create will belong to everyone in the world at the moment it is published.

The leaders of tomorrow, I’m sure, will pass laws to legalize plagiarism, provided they can find such laws in some other country that are readily available for copying.