Re: What are your biggest regrets?
Posted by Allwet on September 18, 2022 at 22:49:06
In Reply to: What are your biggest regrets? posted by JoeJoe on September 15, 2022 at 02:38:12:
I posted this before about a year and a half ago, but there are a lot of new people here, and it fits nicely with this topic. So here it is again:
There were several times when I chickened out and didn’t go all the way, but one time stands out in particular. After more than 50 years I still can’t figure out why I held back.
It was a the last day of school in 7th grade (I was 13), in June 1970. The rest of my family was out of town in Las Vegas, so I went directly after school to my friend’s house to spend the night. I was going to fly to meet them the next day.
It was a blazing hot day in Southern California, 100°+ F. My friend needed to finish up some yard work for a neighbor, and since I wasn’t getting paid for it, he told me to go to his house and jump in the pool, and he would join me in a few minutes. So I went to his room, changed to my swimsuit (which may have been gym shorts with briefs, I can’t remember), and jumped in the pool. I didn’t even keep my t-shirt on. (Definitely in violation of the “buddy system”, but both of our parents trusted us because we had earned the Boy Scout Swimming and Lifesaving merit badges) Back then swimming clothed was still a very rare experience for me, and something I was shy about. I had been wet numerous times in water fights, but the holy grail for me was total immersion which was rare for me since we didn’t have a pool. I felt like I needed some excuse or reason to do it. I never would have done it just because I felt like it in someone else’s pool.
My friend showed up in the back yard a few minutes later, his t-shirt was off with just his jeans, which were sailor bellbottoms that were so popular back then. He kicked off his shoes and dove in the pool in his jeans! I said something like, “Hey, I’m going to go put my clothes on, too!” He said, “Oh, you don’t have to..”.
Here’s where the chickening out came in. I just took him at his word, and stayed in the pool in my shorts. I still don’t understand what I was thinking. Here I was alone with my very best friend who I had known for years, who was swimming in his jeans, a hot day, me with several changes of clothing available, a nice pool, and his mom didn’t care. Why the hell didn’t I go change into my clothes and jump in? I will never know why.
I still remember the clothes I had been wearing that I should have swam in. It was green jeans, poly-cotton, that I had already swam in a couple of times. Because of their color I often wore them with my scout uniform on hikes and campouts. That day I had also been wearing white all-cotton t-shirt with a university logo, that was wonderfully stretchy and clingy when wet.
Although I have been swimming in my clothes many hundreds of times since then (including those same jeans later that summer on a scout 50-miler), I have many times fantasized and aroused myself about this one “could-have-been” experience in that particular combination of clothing.