I woke up about 8am, and I began bitching and moaning to my lady that I no longer wanted to attend my swimming lesson. The fear and nervousness had taken such a firm hold of me, that I had talked myself out of the very thing I had hyped myself to do over the past two weeks. She quickly talked myself off of that cliff, and told me that once I got to the pool, I would be ok and she was correct.

I walked to the pool, stripped down to my trunks, showered in the little pre-pool area, then I walked out to the pool 10 minutes early. There was a woman out there already in the midst of her lesson, with who I thought was going to be my teacher. She was Russian, and she has a thick accent, and immediately I started panicking. How the hell was I going to take instructions from a woman I could barely understand? The woman in the pool kept having to ask the instructor to repeat herself, and it just looked counterproductive. But just when I was starting to work myself into a lather, my real instructor, a woman named Lindsay, came up behind me, asked if I was Rashad(which I thought was funny since there were no other black fellas in the Jewish Community Center), and I said yes and we got started.

The first thing she did is comment on how nervous I looked, and I said, "Hell yeah I'm nervous son", and she started laughing. But once I got in the pool, my ego kicked in, because there were other people swimming around me, and I did not want to go out like Willie Lump Lump (whoever he is). I did laps with a floatation device, I put my head in the water, I used my arms to propel me, and I did a BRIEF amount of work sans the flotation device. I was tired, nervous and in the learning mode all at the same time, but I do believe I made some progress. The next lesson is next Saturday, but I plan on joining the JCC and practicing a bit before then.

I cannot properly convey to you all how huge this is for me, and again, I have to thank my man Sabin. Not only will I conquer a fear of mine, but if all the workouts are like this, I'll be in shape in no time.

Also a big shoutout to the older man, who refused to wear a towel in the locker room and treated me to the kind of nudity only a wife should see. Thanks guy!

Superwoman - The Main Ingredient