I am a duck!

I just wrote this really long post so that I could get to a story that I love about my aunt, but discovered at the end the lead up was both pointless and boring. So I deleted it.

So right here pretend there is a long lead up about my love of swimming, and how I almost drown once, and why I love cheese burgers, and that watching a pool being built is fascinating, and some other random tidbits about my childhood and the rules of the pool.

Alright, now that we are past that, the story I want to tell is about my Aunt Mary.
Let me start by saying I come from a very strange family. If anyone says I am weird, well they are right, but at least I know I come by it honestly.

So Mary is my mom's baby sister. She is younger than my mom by three years (and randomly my mother is three years younger than her older brother, its like my grandparents planned it or something). When Mary was very young, around the age of 4 or 5, (just before you typically start teaching children to swim, but after they are old enough to get into a lot of trouble at a pool if unsupervised), my grandmother took the kids to the pool. Now I don't remember if this was a pool on base or a public pool in Texas where they were visiting family, all I know is it was a pool that had lots of people at it and employed a life guard.

The day is going along well, all of the kids are playing and having a good time, my grandmother was probably drinking, and everyone was in general happy. Suddenly my grandmother looks around and realizes she can not find my aunt anywhere. Panicked she begins calling for Mary and looking everywhere, quickly gaining the attention of the lifeguard who helps y grandmother look. The last thing anyone needs at a pool is a small child who doesn't know how to swim being lost. To my grandmothers horror (and pretty much everyone else at the pool) Mary is finally spotted; on the high dive. She had climbed up there when no one was looking.

Cue mass hysteria; my grandmother screams, the life guard sprints for the high dive, climbing as fast as he can, people are yelling at my aunt not to move that she will be fine. Mary though is perfectly calm. She does not seem to grasp that everyone is terrified of her being on the high dive. Instead of sitting still like she is being told to, and instead of panicking like most children would when everyone is screaming, she calmly called out "It's alright I was a duck in a past life!" *

And then she dove off the high dive to the pool below.

She went smoothly into the water as though she had dived a million times, and gracefully swam down the length of the pool to the steps where she climbed out of the pool. No one is sure where she got the idea of past lives, and no one is sure why she would think she had been a duck, but no one could cast any doubt on the fact that she could swim just fine having never been shown how before.

 So yea when people say I am weird, I know I come by it honestly. My entire family is that way.




*I am told she explained her ability to ice skate perfectly her first time on skates by saying she had been a figure skater in a past life as well.