The act or operation of moving in the form of a worm.
Patrick Duffy was the Man From Atlantis, a 1977 television show perhaps best remembered for the way Duffy swam. He moved underwater with his arms locked to his sides, and only by movement of his waist.
Like a lot of kids at the time I tried to swim like that, my only payoff for the effort being the cackles of my sister, who thought (rightly) that I looked ridiculous. I thrashed and wrangled in the water, never staying fully submerged in the shallow end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool at the University of South Florida.
I can swim but not well. I lied about it in grade school, knowing I could not swim but imagining the ability would natively arise from my bones. In the 3rd grade the Physical Education coach announced that the class would swim in the pool. I was asked if I knew how to swim, and I must have said yes, either intentionally lying or simply not knowing — I don’t remember which but I think it was a mix of the two.
I swam in the Mekong River in Laos but that was different. There were others around to guide me and, in the Mekong where we swam, one did not just swim shark-bait style. It was more like a big hot tub, and while it was deep enough that one could drown it was too shallow and too rugged for the type of swimming one does in pools.
That was my revelation that hot Florida day, when I jumped from a diving board into the shallow end of the school and nearly drowned. I got my footing on the floor of the pool and stood in the water, the coach shouting “Thomas, I thought you said you could swim.” “I thought I could” was my response, and it was not a lie. I did not know that swimming in a pool would be so different from swimming in the Mekong. I did not say that, though, as the other 24 kids in the class listened in on the conversation. Everyone stopped. Thomas couldn’t swim.
My grade school evidently had no time for this, so I had to go to a program at a local college. This coincided with the airing of Man From Atlantis and as my swimming skills improved my enthusiasm for Patrick Duffy’s unique swimming motions reached imitative heights. I failed, of course, but I wonder how many others succeeded in this unusual movement.
