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nonfiction By Alexis Ancona
“Lie on your side please.”
It’s always hard to be comfortable with a clamp around your neck. When I was eleven, I went to Dr.
Nadeau’s office for the first time—he’s a chiropractor. He snapshotted my spine with his radioactive
machine, looking for discrepancies. He found one. The cervical vertebrae were extended. Basically,
my neck was supposed to look like ), but it instead looked like |. Maybe that’s why I’d lie awake for
hours, moaning about my headaches and stiff cervical vertebrae. The soft glow from my light-up
globe chased the demons and spiders away, but it did nothing for the pain inside. How irritating.
“Now curl up into a cannonball position.”
I love swimming. In the water I could be anything I wanted—Ariel from The Little Mermaid,
thirty-pounds lighter, maybe even weightless (nothingness). I can’t remember a time before I knew
how to swim, though to be fair, I can’t remember much at all. While other kids struggled to keep
their heads afloat as they tread water and sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in swimming lessons
at the YWCA, I went straight on to singing the ABC’s. I’d always look for the approving smile from
Dennis the swim instructor with his beard and weirdly short red shorts. If I knew who David Has-
selhoff was, I might’ve compared Dennis to him. The quintessential YWCA experience was always
cannonball contests. I soon learned that the key to a high splash was expanding the area that hit the
water. I made myself as wide as possible. My chubby thighs slapped against the water—a thunder
crack in my ears. The cells in my nostrils screamed and died—a difference in salinity will do that.
I pretended it didn’t hurt because it wasn’t important. The heavily-chlorinated water erupted into
the air. Cheers. I had won.