The black line on the bottom becomes your friend, your confidant, your soul mate and sometimes your enemy. You follow it up and down, back and forth, over and over as you swim lap after lap. It never moves. It's always there to guide you.
As I swam, my mind drifted to all the great memories I have of my swimming years. I have life long friends from my when I was just a teenager that I made on the swim team. We grew up together in the pool. We went through puberty in swimsuits. We experienced success and failure together.
I try to forget the horrendous three hour Christmas vacation workouts that left me wanting to puke or quit swimming all together. The 6:00 am summer workouts at Highland outdoor pool when everyone else was sleeping in on their summer break. I remember the morning each year when the May Flys showed up overnight and coated the entire surface of long-course outdoor pool. We still had to swim and scoop away the bugs as we swam through them hoping not to inhale one. I remember the dreaded 30-second countdown to get in the ice cold water at 6:00 am or the warm up was made up of the butterfly stroke. I remember break-thru 100's and the repeat miles and goal 50's.
There was always a little bit of payback for the coaches. When it rained and if it rained hard! We were already wet, in the pool, so we didn't care but we took a simple pleasure in watching the coaches get drenched on deck. An umbrella could only do so much in two hours of rain. Practice was only delayed if there was lightening, which of course never seemed to happen!
So as I swam back and forth tonight, more unpleasant memories flooded back. I was swimming backstroke and spouted water from my mouth once in awhile and then it occurred to me. Who peed in the pool?
That's right! Obviously, I couldn't taste it but we all know someone peed in the pool at least once today. In fact, we have all peed in the pool at some point in our life. Don't deny it. You may not remember it but you did. But I have to say, pee in the pool doesn't bother me as much as the stray floating hair that wraps around your face and across your mouth, which isn't yours! Then there is the snot that goes drifting by taking on the appearance of a jelly fish. Or the lovely bandaid that has latched onto your leg as your swim by. GROSS! I know! Let's not even get into all the dead skin that is floating around.
Have I completely freaked you out and are you ready to lose your lunch vowing to never swim in a pool again? Relax, take a deep breath and calm down. It's ok. After all, I'm still alive and healthy after years of swimming in a sea of filth! There are plenty of pool chemicals to kill the really nasty stuff. It's fine. Look at the ocean or a lake. Who's cleaning up after all the animals and people in there? Nature you say? Well good luck with that one! So you see, the pool really is quite cleanly. Just smell your skin afterwards - nothing like the fresh smell of chlorine to seduce your loved one!
Even though I recalled all of these unpleasant memories of the pool, I continued my laps and focused on all the great things swimming brought into my life. Besides the obvious health benefits, competitive swimming taught me discipline, responsibility, teamwork, time management, how to push past pain, goal setting, failure, success, how to work hard and it is a skill I will have the rest of my life. The world is two-thirds water after all.
I can't think of any one thing, like swimming, that has taught me so much and carried me through some many stages of my life. It affected every aspect of my life whether I knew it at the time or not. Swimming was my salvation. The swimming pool was my think tank. The black line provided solutions to my problems. It kept me on the straight and narrow. My mother would say swimming kept me busy and tired. Too tired to get into trouble.
So I don't care who peed in the pool because it was one of many warm spots that helped me through life.
Rachel
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