What are some of your childhood accomplishments?

What are some of your childhood accomplishments?

Sep 05, 2022

There are some things in life that seem to come easily or even by luck (if I believed in such a thing). Then there are some things that come only because of a great deal of effort. My favorite childhood accomplishments are the ones that I worked for.

For example, there’s winning things such as a St. Jude’s Bike-a-thon, and the Kelly Swim. My good friend and Girl Scouts sister, Kelly Irving, died at a very young age of a brain tumor and it affected me profoundly. When I was 15 years old I decided to participate in a Swim-a-Thon, called the Kelly Swim, to raise awareness and funds for pediatric brain tumors to honor her and her friendship. Other than summertime swimming in the lake during recreation days, and my many-years-prior swim lessons at the Girls’ Club, I didn’t swim.


But I was highly motivated.


So I gathered as many pledges as I could and when people asked me how many laps I thought I could swim, I honestly answered them that I had a goal of 50 but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it. The way it worked is that they would pledge to pay a certain amount for every lap I swam. So if they pledged 10 cents per lap and I swam 50 laps, they’d pay $5.00. Each person chose a pledge that best fit their ability or desire to pay.


The day of the Kelly Swim, I showed up to the Union Endicott high school pool, surrounded by swim team members, who’d all been assigned participation in the event, along with many other good-hearted participants. My Mom made a giant crock pot of spaghetti and brought it so that I could refuel between laps if I got hungry.


I started swimming and watched the other swimmers to try to learn how to swim efficiently, even trying to do the underwater somersault at the end in order to push off. After many laps, I started to get winded, but kept pushing through. And then - it happened. I got my second wind. I’d never experienced that before and it was very exciting!! After that, I found a rhythm and swam lap after lap, stopping at 50. I took a nice long break to eat some spaghetti and recover a bit. After awhile I got back into the water to see how many more laps I could manage, which was another 50 laps. Though I don’t remember it, my mother says when I got out of the pool that everyone applauded.


Oh, the people who pledged were so surprised!! Most everyone paid the amount they pledged, but some had to give a little less because I’d done twice the laps they’d expected, which meant twice the cost. And that was okay. It was still better than nothing. In the end, I raised just about $3000 and as the person who raised the most, I won a $300 gift card to Boscov’s, a local department store.


That may just be my most favorite accomplishment. It’s not as splashy as the title of Miss Teen Tioga, or as coveted as All State Choir attendee. It doesn’t come with the same monetary value as the opera scholarship to Hartwick College. And it doesn’t have the same cool points as breaking the record for “longest chin up” in my age group for girls in middle school (which I did while singing, no less). Those were all neat in their own way and have a special place in my story, but the Kelly Swim? It was special.

I wasn’t the best swimmer there. I wasn’t the one with the richest friends or family. But I was the one who was willing to ask people to help me do something, to ask them to support me, to put myself out there and look silly in the water, to swim until I could barely remember what it felt like to walk, and to do it in honor of a friend whose life was not nearly long enough. That’s the kind of accomplishment I am proud of.