Brave

H ere's a short personal story on why a swim cap matters. When we were very young, about ages 7 and 9, my sister and I nearly drowned trying to reach our stepdad, who was standing far out at the deep end of the ocean on the Atlantic side of a Panamanian beach. So eventually, our parents decided to put us in Red Cross swimming classes on our military base. Let me tell you what that meant.  It meant that unlike girls who didn't have Black hair, we had to wear swim caps. Our hair, even with expensive French perms (which  were awful to suffer through btw) braided, and wearing adult women's swim caps, were a headache-induing tight fit. So in order to learn how to swim, we had to endure swim cap-induced headaches. My sister eventually dropped the courses. I improved swimming elsewhere, in lakes and rivers, the result being my returning home  from my summer forest service job with my hair badly damaged and sun bleached a brownish red. It sent my mom into fits, and would take her...