DREADING WATER : Tired of Excuses, Some Adults Try Learning to Swim

To protect her lifelong secret, Suzan Montano, 22, lies when friends ask her to go swimming.

“I tell them I don’t like chlorine,” Montano said. “Or I say I’m having my period.”

The truth is she doesn’t know how to swim. She never learned as a child, and when someone threw her into a pool three years ago, she almost drowned.

This summer, Montano, who lives in North Hollywood, is working to conquer her fear. Twice a week, she takes private lessons at Jim Herrick’s Swim School in North Hollywood.

“I’m tired of lying,” she said.

Variety of Lessons

Montano has company. Last summer, 604 adults took swimming lessons at 15 San Fernando Valley pools run by the city of Los Angeles. So far this summer, according to program supervisor Charles James, that figure is even higher. Many are also taking lessons at colleges and private swimming schools. Some schools send their instructors to private homes. Prices range from $10.25 for two weeks of daily half-hour sessions to $19.50 for one half-hour lesson.

If someone is afraid to swim, the common assumption is that the person suffered a traumatic experience as a child. That certainly applies to Dolores Heyman, 46, of Thousand Oaks. She was 9.

“I was in the ocean when a giant wave hit,” Heyman recalled. “I couldn’t breathe. When I woke up (she was rescued by a lifeguard), everyone in the whole beach was looking at me.”

Last year, according to Los Angeles County records, 10 people drowned near beaches patrolled by lifeguards. But a near-disastrous incident isn’t always the convenient scapegoat for would-be swimmers. Marianne McManus, a Santa Monica clinical psychologist, said some people had parents who were frightened of the water, while others grew up in inner city areas and never had an opportunity to learn to swim. Most, though, cannot trace their fear to its origin.

“Water, for some reason, was never a pleasant experience for them,” McManus said. “The fear of water and swimming is not at all uncommon. Our natural element is to walk on earth, not swim.”

Water Friendly

To overcome their anxiety, McManus said, she engages her clients in a “desensitization” procedure. She teaches them relaxation exercises and encourages them to imagine how spending time in the water could be a positive experience. Then, gradually, by developing a friendly relationship with the water, they are ready to learn how to swim. She says the whole procedure takes about 10 sessions.

“I get them to try to play with their kids in shallow water” or go to restaurants by the ocean, said McManus, who has treated clients with phobias since the late 1960s. “It all has to be pleasant.”

Swimming teachers adopt a similar cautious approach. They harbor no illusions that two weeks of instruction will turn anyone into an Olympic swimmer.

“I call it a water confidence class,” said Dena Stevenson, a swimming instructor at an L.A. city pool in Granada Hills. She added of her students, “If they were children, they wouldn’t even be ready for a beginner’s class.”

On a recent Monday, on the first day of a two-week adult swimming class at Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills, the assembled students looked anything but confident. They stood against the wall, towels covering their waists, shivers revealing their fears. When the instructor arrived, they slowly entered the water. They used the steps.

The instructor was Karen Clark, 33, of Woodland Hills. Clark learned how to swim before she could walk, but now she must deal with women who can’t even float.

“I know why you’re here, and what you’re afraid of,” Clark said, “but we’re going to do it anyway.”

The students laughed. Anything to lessen the tension.

Clark stood in 3 1/2-foot-deep water, which was important because it wasn’t the dreaded deep end. Hardly a minute went by without someone needing to be reassured that the class was practicing in the shallow part of the pool.

Clark started with a simple exercise: Put your face in the water and hold your breath.

Maybe not that simple. Helena Goss, 33, a Tarzana housewife, could not do it. She lifted her head out of the water way too quickly.

Greatest Fear

“Everyone’s biggest fear is getting his face wet,” Clark said. “They’re afraid they won’t be able to breathe, that they’ll lose control.”

“The prone glide” (translation: the float) came next. “I’m going to watch first,” Goss said, laughing.

When she tried, she was too anxious, kicking her legs too fast and sinking toward the bottom. Clark hadn’t even mentioned anything about kicking.

“Don’t worry about getting the answer yet,” Clark told her students. “You’re not going to look like me. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years.”

After the prone glide, Clark introduced students to kicking and using their arms. She talked about using the hips and knees. Few students knew what they were doing.

As the class progressed, the six female students began to develop a strong bond against their common adversary: fear. They shouted words of encouragement and watched each other’s every move. They knew they needed each other. But why start swimming lessons now?

“Each summer, I’ve said I was going to do it and I let it go by,” Heyman said. “I look at my son, who is 8. I am jealous. He can do the backstroke!”

Goss is simply tired of going to beach parties where all she can do is watch. “I’m missing out on so much fun.”

Few Men

And apparently, so are a lot of men. It’s not easy to find men enrolled in Valley swimming classes. Herrick, who has taught adult swimmers for 25 years, attributes the female domination of the classes to the men’s “lack of buoyancy” and their abundance of pride.

“Most men are stiff,” Herrick said. “Their feet will go right to the bottom. Plus, because their egos get in the way, they lose patience.”

McManus says women have become much less sensitive about undergoing new challenges, both at work and home. That includes swimming.

“With the women’s movement and women’s magazines, many women are taking on a lot of new experiences in their 30s. They get a lot of social support for trying new things,” McManus said. “Men don’t get that.”

Some men do. Nat Goldblatt of Woodland Hills, who is in his early 70s, takes swimming lessons at the West Valley Jewish Community Center in Canoga Park. Goldblatt tried to learn in high school, college and the Army. Each time, nobody could teach him how to swim.

“I’m not sure it will succeed, but I am going to try,” Goldblatt said. “I’m not embarrassed about it.”

Once in class, perhaps to make up for years of ineptitude or fright, many students want to master everything immediately. Instructors, however, emphasize short-term goals.

Summer Project

“Because they are so far behind,” Stevenson said, “they should see it more as a summer project, not a two-week project.”

Some, such as Heyman, do. “Last year, I was terrified to go into the water. Now I’m happy to be a floater.”

Instructors quickly sense the marked improvement in the adult’s self-esteem that comes from mastering such simple tasks as breathing underwater.

“You have to be a psychologist in a way,” said Marilyn J. Stern, health and physical education director at the West Valley Jewish Community Center. “You know they’re suffering, and you have to let them know they’re not in a freak show.”

Many adult learners, such as Montano, prefer privacy. Montano pays $19.50 for each half-hour lesson; she takes two a week. (The Valley Region Aquatics charges $10.25 for the two-week daily half-hour sessions. The summer’s last session begins August 15.)

Montano is in a hurry. Only her best friend and sister know her painful secret. Even her boyfriend isn’t aware that she can’t swim.

By next summer’s rash of beach parties and get-togethers, she hopes to end her history of lying.

“Next summer, I’ll like chlorine.”