"The Lincoln"

There's a new challenge at the pool.  It's more like a dare, and for teenage boys, it's hard to resist.

It's called "the Lincoln."

I'm watching teenagers take running leaps off the diving board and land flat on their stomachs or backs.  But every once in a while, a boy will complete the impossible trick dive called the Lincoln.

You run, you dive, and mid-air, you turn to the side and do a side flip.

The Lincoln.

"What makes it so hard," one teenager explains, "is physics.  You're going one direction, and you have to tell yourself to turn to your side and do a flip in a perpendicular direction."

I nod, wondering why it's called the Lincoln.  Then I remember that gravity experiment when a penny falls straight down after you push the round tube it's sitting on to the left or right.

All the older boys line up and try to do the trick.  Of the group, only one can do it.  The lifeguards cheer.  This is the stuff of summer legend.  Somebody can do "the Lincoln!" 

Then, a little boy, maybe 6 or 7, gets up on the board.  He runs, he dives, and, smooth as butter, turns to his right and flips in the air.  The Lincoln.  Collective silence all around.  The lifeguard stops twirling her whistle.

"No way," the guy who knows the physics and how hard this dive is says.

The little boy, the one who hasn't had physics yet and only knows gravity by experience--and not theory--, surfaces, smiles, and says: "That wasn't hard.  I didn't even have to think about it."

Changing direction and form, mid-flight, is hard for anyone.  I hate change.  I hate everything about it.  But watching that little boy just get some speed and do it, without over-thinking the difficulty, inspired me.

Yeah it's hard to do whatever it is I've got to do.  But today, I want to pick up some speed and do it.