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Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Float.

This conversation made me think about different things that I enjoyed doing when I was a little girl, all involving water. I love water. And it was very fortunate for me, or it was very lucky for me growing up in an area where we were close to a lake.

And so my family had a boat, which was really nice. And also we had a swimming pool that was shared with everyone that lived in our neighborhood.

So some of the things I remember doing in the summertime, y’know, when there was no school and it would be hot, one of the things was going with my family, my mom and my dad and my two brothers and sometimes my aunt and uncle and my cousins, we would go up, drive about an hour north into the mountains to this one town.

I grew up in a state called Georgia which is in the southeastern part of the United States, so we would actually drive to a town called Helen… Helen, Georgia, where we would go tubing.

So tubing is where you… we would rent these, they look like… they look like big donuts, so they’re circular or they’re round and then there’s an open part in the middle for you to sit.

So we would rent… and they’re inflated, inflated means they’re pumped with air so they float on top of the water. So we would rent these and we would be driven to one part of the river.

And we would get in the water, the river, and then we would… we would sit on the… they’re called inner tubes, we would sit on the tubes and we would float down the river.

And it was so nice because you’re floating at… it’s kind of a slow pace. It’s not at all fast, this particular river we would go to. So it was very safe for children, except for sometimes there would be snakes in the water.

But other than that, it was just a slow pace. And the water wasn’t deep at all. It was just nice and relaxing and it was something fun for my family and sometimes my relatives, my aunt, uncle and their children, to do together. So that was called tubing.

And that also reminded me of going to water… well, there was a particular water park that was about an hour from where I grew up in another town called Marietta, which was actually close to the city of Atlanta, and Marietta has a water park.

So water park means there would be water slides and all different things to do that involved water.

There was also like a big swimming pool that somehow there was these waves could be made and something would be turned on so in the pool suddenly there’d be all these big waves.

And it would… there’d be the waves for about 10 minutes and then it would stop and it would be a regular swimming pool. And then the waves would start again after maybe 10 minutes. So 10 minutes with the waves, 10 minutes without and it would just keep doing that.

So this water park, it’s actually called White Water. I believe it’s still open. One of the things that, y’know, the main thing to go to White Water for is actually the water slides.

There’s many different water slides. Some you actually get on an inner tube like I just described and you go down a steep slide on water and they can have turns in them or they can be straight and very steep going down, y’know, very tall and you go fast. And there’s just different kinds of water slides.

But then, this water park had something called the Little Hooch. And the Little Hooch was actually like a little river that went around a pretty large area of the park.

And you got an inner tube and just like when I was a little girl, you would sit on the inner tube and just float along as there was a, y’know, a slight current… current meaning something pulling the water, so it was just a very, not very fast, y’know, pretty slow pace we would go. We would just float along.

And that was probably my favorite thing to do, actually. More than the water slides even. I could stay in the Little Hooch all day. It was called the Little Hooch because, I believe, Hooch was, is a shortened name for one of the rivers in the area, the Chattahoochee, so I think that that’s why they called it the Little Hooch.

So that was another time I went tubing and that was… I went to White Water only a few times, probably when I was a little bit older, like middle school and high school age. But that was also fun.

And then I was thinking of my summers and how so much of my summers were spent in the swimming pool. So I would just… me and my cousin, one of my cousins, I should say, she was a year younger than me or she is a year younger than me.

She would come over and spend the night with me a lot of times in the summer, we would go to the swimming pool, we would be there all day, just swimming. We loved it. Every… y’know, as much as we could, we would be in that swimming pool.

And I can remember just floating on my back and looking up at the sky. There were a lot of trees that would be hanging over and I would just look up at the sky, the clouds or the trees hanging over the swimming pool, because this swimming pool was outside.

Or sometimes I would just hold my breath as long as I could and I would float on my stomach, both ways. I loved doing both. They were just so relaxing.

And, of course, we loved just swimming around, too. Swimming underwater, on top of the water, we were little fish.

And there were a few times also that my family took family vacations and we went to the ocean. We weren’t very far from the ocean. And one of my favorite things I like to do in the ocean was just to float.

And it’s so easy to float in the ocean because just as AJ talked about with the float tanks, the ocean has salt so the salt naturally makes you float on top of the water.

In the swimming pool, I would actually have to kick my legs a little bit to stay on top, on the surface of the water, but in the ocean I didn’t have to do that. I could just lay, y’know, just float.

Then, as I mentioned, we lived near a lake, very close to a lake and so my parents had a small boat and we would… we learned how to waterski behind the boat because it was a little motor boat.

But actually, I can remember, some of my most favorite memories of going out on our boat was not so much of waterskiing. It was more of taking our boat, just exploring the lake and taking the boat into these coves.

A cove is an area that kind of goes back in from the main part of the lake. And a lake is a big body of water. It’s not as big as an ocean, but it’s a pretty big body of water. So a cove would be a smaller area off of the main part of the lake.

So we would go back in these coves and it would be really quiet and my dad would turn the motor off on the boat and we would just float. The boat would just float on top of the water.

And I can remember that I actually liked that because there wasn’t the sound of the motor, it was just really quiet. And Georgia in the summer is beautiful. There are so many trees so, y’know, the trees also had a very calming effect. Just floating in the boat, I always loved that.

Yeah, it brings back good memories, more so, than I said of even of the waterskiing. Waterskiing was fun, too. Waterskiing is just basically you’re on skis, either two or one, and you’re being pulled behind a boat. So that was fun, too, but I actually really liked just floating on our boat with no motor on.

So looking back at these things that I really enjoyed doing when I was a little girl even, y’know, up into high school, it brings back good memories and makes me realize that they were all providing one of the main benefits of float tanks and that was relaxation.

So even though I say… I said in the conversation I’ve never tried a float tank, and I still haven’t, I actually was floating from when I was a little girl, up through into college, even high school.

I was floating in a different way, though. Y’know, I had my senses. I could see. I could hear things. I could feel things, like the wind. So my senses weren’t withheld or deprived, as I talked about in the vocabulary lesson.

But I was still floating. I was still getting the main benefits of just relaxing. And I think water in general has that characteristic for people. Water is very healing. It’s very relaxing.

So I’m curious. Have you ever heard of one of these flotation tanks or as they used to be called, sensory deprivation tanks? Y’know, do you have these in your country? And, if so, have you tried one?

Let us know on the social site. We would love to hear from you about that.

Alright, this concludes or this finishes the commentary for this conversation, Float. Have a good month and I’ll see you next time. Bye.