Age 2: You realize if you venture near the big blue thing, people pay attention to you. Thus commences your life-long fixation with the big blue thing.
Age 3: For the first time, you are slowly lowered into the big blue thing. It is colder than you thought. You squeal with joy. It is weightless. It is freedom. It is bliss. You are surrounded by strange pink and green noodles and yellow ducks, and yet you shed the confines of gravity and hysterically giggle as your toes dance wildly in the depths below. You like this.
Age 5: After months of pleading, you begin swim lessons. Your teacher is a 26 year-old starving artist who exists on ramen noodles. He teaches you life survival skills. You will one day understand “irony.”
Age 8: You join the summer recreational league. You realize swimming outside in the cold morning summer’s air is a violation of the senses, but spazzing-out on pixie sticks and fun dips at the swim meet makes it all worthwhile. You embrace the bribery.
Age 11: Your summer league friends join a year-round swim team: you do too. In addition to swimming, you play soccer, basketball, baseball, football, tennis, hockey, track, cross-country, handball, pinball, volleyball, foosball, and golf. Your swim team’s added commitment is no match for your 24/7 metabolism. You are the Deion Sanders of Youth Athletics.
Age 14: You are not the Deion Sanders of Youth Athletics. You retire from all other sports and decide, due to lack of coordination, to swim full-time. Also, in swimming, no rubbery balls fly toward your face and split open your lips on account of your huge metal braces. You become a swim geek. You begin learning the names of the sport, the legendary records and times, and you enthusiastically explain the difference between long-course and short-course to your utterly confused and befuddled parents, who smile and nod.
Age 15: High school swimming begins. You depart your club team nervous, unsure what to expect. On the first day, your swim training rapidly changes from timed 2000 freestyle repeats to timed 25 freestyle sprints from the blocks. You enjoy high school swimming.
Age 16: You get your license and then you learn to drive, in that order. Consequently, you skip practice and purchase Shamrock Shakes at McDonalds with two other teammates equally enthused about being 16. But you fail to understand that Swim Moms are a modern-day Gestapo and any and all of your actions are secretly documented and reported. Your car is taken away. You are grounded. And you learn, the hard way, not to skip practice for something stupid like Shamrock Shakes.
Age 17: Your high school friends switch lunchroom cliques for the billionth time. But you still have sleepovers with the same group of swim friends since you have had since age 11. It is understood amongst all the friends in your life that you have two equally distinct yet mysterious lives: your swim life, and your school life. They are separate. They are unique. You never mix the two. Doing so could potentially devastate your fragile ecosystem of swim friends vs. school friends. You do not combine these two ecosystems, ever.
Age 18: You graduate high school. You leave your club coaches, high school coaches, middle school coaches, swim school coaches, and all other coaches in your life were like a second family. You are sad, but you aren’t mourning, either. Reporting to two sets of parents day-in and day-out became cumbersome, and, after all, you’re 18! Time for fun! College swimming will be much more laid-back, you think! Yeah… college!
Age 19: Unfortunately, no. Your College Coach is Santa Claus’ evil twin: he knows when you are sleeping, and he knows when you are awake. He will find you when you skip practice, even when you hide on the 5th floor of the library in the part no one knows about near the Native American artifacts and the comfy couch. Your coach knows everyone, everything, everywhere. Worse than that -- He doesn’t understand your taper methodology, and he absurdly makes you sprint during your once hallowed taper-time, disrupting your “Nothing-Is-More” mentality. As soon as you can, you flee back to club swimming that summer, your tail far between your legs. You soon forget the horrors, because you are back with the club-swimming teenagers again, where you are king, boss, and immortal.
Age 20: College Coach once again doesn’t understand your taper methodology, despite your charts and diagrams and your well-articulated thesis. “This is it,” you think. “Death by misguided taper.” Nevertheless, you swim fast – faster than you could have imagined -- and you are humbly reminded that 20 year-olds don’t know diddly about squat.
Age 21: Morning practice attendance abruptly ends.
Age 21.00001: 8x800s butterfly, because morning practices haven’t yet ended.
Age 22: After 11 years of competitive swimming, you swim your last meet, hang up the suit, and call it a career. You hug the coach you once cursed. You vow that you learned a lot, and you reflect on a wonderful and rewarding career. Three days later, you heckle your former still-swimming college teammates as they trudge to the pool for morning practice, as you sit in an inflatable hot tub at 5:30am with a cold beverage. Post-swimming life is good.
Age 23: You gain 15 pounds.
Age 24: You gain 15 pounds.
Age 25: You gain 15 pounds.
Age 30: In response to your doctor’s exercise inquiries, you mention your “NCAA days.” He laughs in disbelief.
Age 35: You dust off the goggles. You hop back in. Your three-times-per-week swim workout is always capped-off with a sprint 25 butterfly for time. You always swim fast. Finally – at long last -- you taper how you want.
Age 40: You join a masters team. You once again have two lives: swim friends, and then everyone else. You drink Shamrock Shakes without fear.
Age 100: You slowly, very slowly, kneel down poolside, your knees cracking, your back somewhat shaped like a question mark. You strap on your goggles, the same ones you’ve used for years. You stare at the mirrored surface, that perfect smooth glass, and you smile. It’s just how you like it. You’ve made it this far -- the big blue thing has been good to you, you think -- as your toes dance wildly in the depths below.
3 comments:
oh my gosh, ages 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17 were dead on!
except apparently i was better at age 16 than the author was, i didn't get caught! sorry mom :)
That's pretty funny :) Swim team was a lot of fun!
Erika, she knew. She was letting you grow and learn the right way to do things. It paid off didn't it?
Robert, does synchronized swimming fit in there anywhere???
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