Well, I had a REALLY depressing moment today. I love kids and am hoping to do parties in the future, but I am sincerely blind. Okay, I shouldn't say that since I've worked with blind kids and I am definitely not truly blind, but I do have VERY bad eyesight. If I am in the shallow end of a normal sized pool, I cannot tell if adult people are at the deep end. They blend into the wall, my eyes are so poor. Today I tried to swim without goggles in a chlorine pool. I have easily swum with my contacts in (yes, I know it's dangerous!) in a saltwater pool before, but in chlorine my contacts washed right out.
I could not see the bottom of the pool, I could not see the sides of the pool, I could not see people IN the pool... not without my contacts. I hit the bottom while swimming... TEETH FIRST! When I was a kid, my teeth were stained horribly by medications so I have caps on my front four teeth--they cost thousands of dollars, so needless to say I was TERRIFIED when I scraped them along the bottom of the pool!
After that, I was too scared to do anything but swim in a straight line, far from the sides and often putting an arm in front of me to check that I hadn't veered off course. Basically, I couldn't do anything. Needless to say, this REALLY depressed me, because I want nothing more than to look like you lovely mers in your gorgeous videos. I DO know how normal people see underwater, because I am able to swim in contacts in a saltwater pool. Without my contacts is WAY worse than what normal people see underwater. It's like SCUBA diving in black water--I couldn't make out anything more than a few inches in front of my face. There was just the giant white of the edges and bottom of the pool with no depth perception at all--I couldn't even tell where the lane markers were! Plus, when I came out of the water, I couldn't tell if other people were in or at the pool or if I was all alone. Definitely NOT a safe way to swim at a birthday party, not when you have kids in the water with you!
I'm sure some mers have eyes as bad as mine and manage it, but I TOTALLY do not feel safe trying any tricks this way, not after the big teeth scrape--what if I had hit my head?! So I felt sorry for myself and headed home, depressed. I would definitely welcome any suggestions about swimming blind, or how you guys with bad eyes feel about swimming in chlorine. I know there are several posts out there about seeing underwater, wearing contacts in water, whether mermaids should wear goggles, etc, and I've read them all in the past (this has been a big worry for me), but is anybody else so blind that they're AFRAID to swim without goggles?
I am NOT a big fan of mermaids in goggles, but on the way home I started thinking about them. Okay, so maybe I need to wear goggles to swim safely in chlorine (or at least to feel SAFE when swimming in chlorine), which sucks if I want to make pretty videos or go pro. But then I started thinking about how I could hide goggles. I am wondering now if I can make something really pretty to cover my goggles (a tropical looking mask about the size of a Ninja Turtle's mask, maybe?), and sort of make it my thing. Or at least my thing when underwater.
I LOVE mermaiding, it is SO much fun, but I just don't feel like I can swim in chlorine without goggles! UGH! Me wants to be the PRETTY mermaid. *pouts* I know this post is kind of meandering, but it really upset me. I knew I had horrible eyesight (I once knocked my glasses off my bedside table and it took me twenty minutes crawling around on the floor to find them!), but I thought since it's already hard to see underwater that it wouldn't be any worse without my contacts. Now I realize that was pretty naive of me, but, siiiigh... I dunno... Any thoughts on what I might do? Will practice get my courage up or do you guys think it really is dangerous to swim this blindly? Can you cover goggles up well enough that they don't look stupid? (Mine are clear but I still hate how they look). I just dunno...
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