my memory of swimming lessons
As far back as I can remember, my mom wanted me (and later my sister) to take swimming lessons. Every year I would start out with the greatest of hopes. We would learn to bob and to drown proof and so on. We would sing "I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor" and "The wheels on the bus go round and round"* and so on. Great fun. But somehow every year I would be unable to complete the class. Ear infection, long trip away, something. Eventually I made it out of the beginning level (tadpole) up to the second level (frog). But by that time I was old enough to notice that the girls who were teaching swimming were not much older than me, and young enough to be unbearably awkward about noticing. So I presented my mom with a flat refusal to attend swimming classes anymore. And thus I really never learned to swim.
* I'm pretty sure The wheels on the bus... is associated with the decisive moment of embarrassment, because I get all flushed thinking about it, but I can't actually remember. I'm fairly sure she was blonde with a ponytail. Sigh.