Word: drowned
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...This particular boarding school supported a number of arcane traditions, one of which was a mandatory drown-proofing seminar. My gym class and I entered a cold pool at six in the morning, fully clothed and wearing shoes, to float for 30 minutes. At first, the experience was kind of soothing. Then, the football coach sprayed us with a high-powered hose to mimic “conditions...
...drown-proofing exercise failed to render me sea-worthy, instead just leaving me angry and wet, but it ended up being a life-altering exercise in a broad scope. That moment in the pool crystallized the school’s systemic absurdity: Despite all of the good things about it, boarding school is an irredeemably terrible idea. So, I never really bought in—I had fun, fooled around, and messed up, at least in comparison to the average student here...
...SATs. I participated in a number of extracurriculars. But I also met with the disciplinary council a few times, for typical teenage nonsense: being out after hours, going to the school clinic when I was enjoying excellent health, et cetera. I nearly failed chemistry and the gym class of drown-proofing fame. I had a mild problem with authority and a real problem with truancy...
...which, growing up, were products of impulse alone, now seem like calculated ways of getting attention. How does this happen without our noticing? Perhaps the imagination, like baby teeth, just falls out in pieces and is replaced with something more permanent. Maybe the mélange of hormones that drown a body in adolescence takes no prisoners and leaves no survivors. Whatever it is, one day spaceships turned back into boxes and the monsters moved out of the closet. Losing this capacity to fantasize is conceptually heart-breaking to me, but it’s not a cause...
...been reduced to 10%, I think, because of the effect that these movies had had on the committees that were giving the money. My departure had nothing to do with me being seduced into working in the United States. It was more a flight - and trying not to drown in the sea - to be able to do movies I liked instead of being forced by the Dutch to make movies they liked...