Were My Feet Fins?

Lately, I have been going to the public pool with my son about three times a week. There is an outdoor pool within walking distance, but with this heat, the poolside is scorching, so I find myself heading toward an indoor pool that is
a bit further away.

Since it is summer vacation, both the shallow pool for toddlers and the 25-meter pool are very crowded.
My son is still practicing his flutter kick, so he takes a kickboard and goes back and forth in the beginner's lane of the 25-meter pool, taking breaks in between.

"Don't bend your knees, okay, keep your legs straight. Don't tense up."
As I teach him in this bossy way, I show him how to swim by saying, "You do it like this," and
"Mom, you're fast!" my son claps his hands.

I am absolutely terrible at land sports, whether it's horizontal bars or ball games.
It doesn't feel bad to be praised.

But, in fact, when I was a child, I was terrible at being in the water.
When I was in kindergarten, I would rather run around the poolside than get into the pool (please don't imitate this, as it is dangerous).

My grandparents, seeing this, enrolled me in a swimming school even though I was crying and refusing.
At first, I hated it more than anything, but it is a strange thing, once I got used to it, I grew to love swimming.

In elementary and junior high school, my teachers would ask me, "Why don't you try entering a competition?" and I even participated in practice sessions.
However, what they said to me each time was always the same.

"Your arm rotation is too slow. If you could just do that faster, it would be perfect."
And then,
"You're fast because your flutter kick is good."
they would say, so my flutter kick was the only thing I was often praised for.

Because of that, I was proud of myself, thinking, "I'm good at the flutter kick," and was teaching my son how to swim, but... yesterday, my husband, who was watching from the side, said quietly,

"Ice-Namazu-chan, since your feet are big, maybe they're having an effect like fins?"
he said.

Gasp.
Actually, I wear size S for both tops and bottoms, but my shoes are LL.
For a long time, when I asked at shoe stores, "Do you have LL?", the staff would often give me a look of surprise.

Since I was a child, that has been a complex of mine, and I have lost count of how many times I have self-deprecatingly said things like, "My feet are like Donald Duck's" or "Am I Bigfoot?"

But, a person who was helping with the care of my grandparents once said,
"Big feet are hard to trip over, so they're good. They're a gift from God."
and I felt a little saved by those words, but...

To think that they were also useful in the water.

Of course, I don't know if my swimming is fast because of the fin effect of my large feet.
But, when I remember that my teacher always said, "Only your flutter kick is fast," maybe it's not entirely off the mark.

My large feet, which have been a complex since I was little.

They protected me from falling, and perhaps they even made my swimming a little faster.
The words "a gift from God" that the caregiver said to me back then might actually be true...

It was on a day of extreme heat that I suddenly thought of such things.