What's the catch?

You catch a ball, catch a cold or catch a cab. (Hopefully, the Cash Cab. Yes, I am quite the dork.)

Those are easy.

What I'm having trouble with is catching the water. Specifically, (not sure if that's spelled right) my swim stroke has my head spinning.

When I was about five years old, my mom thought tap dancing would be an excellent idea. I don't remember much except the most exciting part was buying the tap shoes. I thought I would dance like Fred Astaire. Well, a female Fred Astaire, anyway.

In reality, I was the youngest in the entire class by about 25 years. I don't remember what the teacher looked like nor could I even fake that I knew what I was doing. I would just move my feet to make the tappity-tap sound, stare out the window and just hope my pathetic tap dancing would be filtered out by all the other people who actually knew what they were doing.

In short, I was lost.

Fast forward to now, me in the pool. "Tamirra, you're not catching. Think of putting your arms in like you're going over a barrel." I wish that was the first time I'd ever heard the barrel euphamism and, even better, it solves my problematic stroke in a flash of realization like a bolt of lightening. (In this case, lightening is a good thing.)

Not true. My arm enters the water as if going over flat origami, I think. Anyway, I've got so many things to think about during one little innocent stroke that my thoughts go something like this: "Arm over a barrel. Crap. Well, that's not right. Hand push - hmm, Jamba Juice is niceI'msunburnednapsarenice. Oh, my hand's out of the water. OK, I'll pay attention with the other arm."

There's an attention span war going on in my brain but I'm so confused that, like a surge of electricity, my thoughts focus on swimming then the mental train derails. Overload.

I have to think one day in the next year or so I'll get the hang of this.

By the way, my mom ended up taking notes during tap dance class, buying a big wooden board and forcing me to learn the dance routine that she was paying good money for in the kitchen. I can still do a mean Shuffle to Buffalo.