For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for July 17, 2016

chicken

Been off the 1 meter (low) board many times. Maybe off of the 3 meter (high) board a time or two but the memory is fuzzy on that point. And then there was the hotel in town that had an actual 10 meter diving platform. I was never remotely tempted to jump from that sucker. And by the way, the pool did have a 16-18 foot deep diving well beneath the platform.

In College we had to jump off the diving board to pass PE. We watched a girl stand and sit on the end of the board for over 2 hours. She never did jump.

I worked one summer for the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests and stayed well north of Sudbury at a place called Halfway Lake Provincial Park. There are cliffs on the east side of the lake that were our favorite high points for water entry. Not sure how high but when you’re in high school they seemed tall enough. Bottom line was a great summer.

Technically she didn’t “jump” off the the diving board.

Well that is the standard way for a lot of kids, for their first time. It will get easier, and better the more times she does it over the summer/s.

My dad used to start off bouncing on the board like a professional diver until he got some serious air, then he would land on his butt on the board and “flop” into the water. It was hilarious every single time.

I’m glad to see diving boards are allowed in Canada. I heard they’re being removed from swimming pools in the U.S. because people are worried about being sued if a kid gets hurt or worse using one.

no she isn’t, she doing the standard, “stand up to her brothers teasing”

Went off the 3 meter board once, hit the water wrong and barely made it to a ‘pier’ in the middle of the pool. Learned my lesson stuck to the 1 meter board or the side of the pool.

When I was growing up, we went to day camp in summer and swimming lessons were mandatory. I’m so glad – I ended up on the swim team. We also had two diving boards…low springboard and higher platform-type. I learned to do fancy dives. Nowadays, it’s sad that public pools no longer have diving boards and they don’t let you do racing dives off the side. Kids will never learn all that stuff unless they belong to an swimming organization. Sad. Reading these comments, I think I saw Canada is different. Lucky Canadians.

She did better than me on my only try at the high board. Climbed up, looked over, thought about it, climbed back down!

I remember working a summer camp. You had to swim across the pool for deep end privileges, and kids who had no idea how to swim would jump in and go straight to the bottom. We would scrape them off the bottom and hand them up to someone on top. I lost track of how many lives I “saved”.

She didn’t jump. She let go of the edge after hanging on to it for dear life.