you people need to lighten up and make a floatation device out of your pants.

today i went for a swim at the local natatorium. this structure houses a pool bel grande with 8 lanes on the long course. today there were 2 other lappers there when i arrived. i have only been 2x on saturday at 15:00, but two or three people would appear to be the norm for this time of day during the summer. during the school year when the swim teams are in full swing, there are more kids in the pool on saturday afternoons, but in the summertime, they are all safely tucked away with their video games and such.

so, i went for a lapswim with 2 other adults and was impressed again with this universal truth of adulthood: we are a boring lot. these folks were just sluffing along up & back & up & back. they were doing their regular laps and their kickboard laps and their fin laps. they had some super toys - fins for their hands and their feet! - and what are they doing? sluffing.

back in the day, at brigadoon, we were required to take swim lessons 5 days per week. they taught us 5 strokes - front crawl, back crawl, breastroke, elementary back, and sidestroke. i started as a beginner and progressed through advanced beginner, intermediate I, intermediate II, intermediate III, intermediate III+, and intermediate III++ -- because they didn't have anything else to teach us besides lifesaving, they kept putting plus signs after the intermediate III. we were such good swimmers we mostly swam laps and learned water ballet.

they taught everyone how to dive from the dock, how to perform water ballet, and how to make floatation devices out of our clothing. we played tag and water volleyball and jumped off the diving boards with wet pillow cases which filled with air and became floaties. games like water volleyball were really just tricks to keep us treading water forEVER. and of course we swam laps. laps upon laps upon laps. when we got to be big girls, we tracked our laps and recorded the miles on a big chart outside the dining hall where everyone could see who had swum the most. [these days they don't do that b/c weaker swimmers might "feel bad". ::sigh::]

the oldest campers could take lifesaving, but only if you were staying at the brig for 8 weeks. lifesaving was an 8 week course - one of the toughest lifesaving courses offered anywhere. we learned lifeguarding - how to keep safe around the water - and lifesaving - how to rescue drowning people & administer cpr. it was challenging & rewarding. during the latter stages of our training, when we were in the lake chugging out 2 miles every afternoon, we'd be stalked by the swimming staff who would tackle us in the water and we'd have to get out of their hold & "save" them. it was serious, but fun.

so today i am sluffing along with these other adults thinking «what the hell is the matter with us?» - so i threw in a lap of sidestroke and a lap of sculling and elementary back and i did a few surface dives and i swam an entire lap underwater. okay, i swam an entire lap by swimming underwater and coming up for air and going back under, but still... it was a wee bit more creative than all the sluffing going on around me.

a wee bit more creative and a helluva lot more fun.