lifescouts: swimming and drive-in movies

My fifth and sixth Lifescouts badges...

I've decided I'm going to save these up and do two or three at a time (either that or just wait until the end of a fixed period of time and blog them all at once).

lifescouts - swimming
Swimming

I'm not a swimmer.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being in the water, I love getting wet, I love splashing around in pools and while I'm not someone who goes to the beach, I have enjoyed hanging out (pun at your discretion) in the water at Maslins Beach (aka the nudist beach). But I need to be able to have my feet under me.

And I'm pretty sure it all comes from the time I nearly drowned.

When I was in primary school we had swimming lessons at the former Salisbury University pool (the pool, and the university is now a housing estate), I'm guessing we were probably supervised by the Uni students, but I don't really remember.

But after a lot of time doing the "holding onto the side" thing and the "kickboard" thing the woman who was teaching us got us to do a relay race... I think it was just from one side of the pool to the other, although it could have been there and back.

I don't know, because I never made it back.

I do know that I was swimming, properly head-turning, feet-kicking, arm-propelling swimming. But I seemed to have been swimming for a really, really, really long time without reaching the other side of the pool... so I stopped to see exactly where I was and how far I had to go.

Unfortunately the pool had two shallow ends and a central deep section and I'd been swimming next to the deep section, but hadn't been swimming in a straight line, I'd been slowly curving out over the deep end. And I chose to stop right in the middle and attempt to put my feet down.

As there was nothing to put my feet down on, I kept going and went under the water, got a mouthful and started to flail around.

Fortunately the instructor dove in after me pretty damn quickly and pulled me out before I went under again.

And I've never really had much interest in trying to relearn to swim since then.

I do enjoy splashing around in the water though.

lifescouts - drive-in movies
Drive-In Movie

Adelaide only has one drive-in.

It didn't used to, they used to be everywhere, but eventually people realised that sitting in your car for two hours listening to a movie through one tiny speaker (or your car radio) was a waste of time when they could have been in a nice comfortable cinema and the drive-ins all went away.

Okay, that's probably not the real reason, but it's pretty much the reason in my head. I never really understood the drive-in.

I think that I did go to one of the local ones at least once with the neighbours and their three kids, but I really don't remember what we may have seen.

The only drive-in trip I actually remember was a double feature I went to at the last remaining Adelaide drive-in with Ludo and Lownee and our friend Jason in about 1999 to see Stigmata (which was fucking horrible) and Double Jeopardy (which was a bit crap).

We went in two seperate cars (I think one of them may have been mine, but don't quote me on that), and I think if the movies had been better I might have had a better time, but they weren't great so I was uncomfortable and kind of bored.

I also remember the candy bar being really dodgy looking... like it hadn't been renovated in about 30 years.

So drive-in movies get filed under the heading of "I just don't get it".

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