Maybe it was a sign, a gentle elbowing, that I should have acted on the promise I made in early spring. You know, to learn how to swim.
My wife, kids and friends have all given it to me quite good since I confessed that failing in this space. Kelley, a friend and former lifeguard, even offered to teach me. We never got around to it.
And then I ambled into the convention center the other day. Cullen Jones, an Olympic gold medal swimmer, was speaking to a group of black and Latino kids about swimming or, more to the point, how not swimming can kill them.
The elbow came as we chatted ahead of his speech. He thought I was kidding when I told him I couldn’t swim. Realizing I was serious, he looked at me as if I had just slapped my mother.
I was actually apologizing to the 25-year-old man when he launched into his story, the one of the 5-year- old nearly drowned boy who last year became only the second African-American to win a swimming gold medal, who now holds the American record in the 50-meter freestyle.
He was with his mom and dad at a Pennsylvania water slide, riding tire inner tubes into a deep pond.
“This is a bad idea,” his mother, Debra, moaned.
“Just don’t let go of the tube,” his father told him. And off he went.
Young Cullen hit hard at the bottom and overturned. He did not let go of the tube until he blacked out.
“My mother got me into swim lessons the next week,” he recalled.
He has parlayed his fame as a member of the U.S. team, with its emotional, record-setting victory in the 400-meter freestyle in Beijing last year, into spreading the swimming gospel to young minority children.
On his “Make A Splash” tour, sponsored by USA Swimming, Jones ticks off statistics from the dark side of swimming:
• African-American children are three times more likely to drown than white children.
• Almost 60 percent of Latino and black kids don’t know how to swim, or twice as many as their white peers.
“You were never provided swim lessons as I kid, I’m guessing,” Jones said. I looked away.
People, especially in minority communities, find other things that are more important, he said. Parents never have a problem sending their kids to the pool to cool off, to get them out of their hair, he adds, leaving the lifeguards in charge of their child’s life.
It is not about money, he said — “We do find a way to get our kids $200 Air Jordans, don’t we?”
No, it is about prioritizing. Swimming is a life skill you give your child, he said, one that can save his or her life.
The kids pepper him with questions following his chat: “Yes, I was usually the only black swimmer on my team since age 10.
“Yes, people always think I should be doing another sport, or they’ll see me in my (athletic) gear in airports and assume I am a ballplayer. There was definitely racism and ignorance on this journey.”
The kids and adults who had joined them applaud wildly when he finishes.
“If you don’t think I was born for this . . .” Jones says, smiling widely.
I’ll get a lesson, I tell him.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
