I had a request.
A dear pal of mine requested that I blog about my swim team days....
I was a natural born swimmer. As a baby, my babysitter was the bathtub. I had mastered underwater breathing before the age of 8 months and the breast stroke had been perfected by the age of 2. A baby pool was not in my vocabulary...I needed depth; I needed at least 12 feet of water before I could have fun. My mom enrolled me in swim team at the age of 8. As a youngster, I was in the bathtub one day when I perfected a perfect streamline stroke. My mom burst into tears and screamed, "Michael! Our baby is going to be an Olympian!"....Okay so maybe thats an exaggeration. It was more like my parents were annoyed with me and swim team was a great way to get me out of the house for an hour. I took the sport seriously. When we went to Swimwear Unlimited to pick up my regulation suit I peppered the saleswomen with questions,
Are these goggles resistant to fogging up? Do they have proper suction?
Does this swim cap allow for optimum speed?
It was no joke to me. I knew I had talent and I laughed at the other jack ass kids at swim team.
"Hellllooooooo, pretty sure free style consists of getting your arm completely out of the water Mitch.....idiot."
"Hey Danny, when was the last time you saw an Olympian doing the doggy style?"
"Nice swimsuit Patrick, I had no idea Tommy Bahama made regulation racing suits"
I was that kind of kid. So at our first meet, I was told that I was in the "exhibition" round. Exhibition? What the hell was that? I was informed that it was where you raced alone.......you know, to gain more points for your team.
Ooo, I get it. I'm so good that they don't want to subject the other kids to my talent. I gotcha. So I would pack my swim bag with Jello packets and pixie sticks. Right before it was my time to shine, I would rub my limbs furiously, "warming them up" and literally chug straight sugar from these Jello packets. I was a fucking lunatic. A force to reckoned with. I had my mom write things like "Eat my bubbles" and "Hurricane" on my back in permanent marker. I walked around the pool, heading to the starting blocks growling at little kids as I pumped myself up. Up on the blocks I got into tunnel vision mode. Winning was all I cared about. Then it dawned on me. Wait, why was no one else swimming against me again?
How was this going to gain points for the team?
Wait a minute..........Oh my god.
Oh my god!
I'm racing against myself!
My mom stood at the end of the pool with two thumbs up screaming "Go kitten!"
How embarrassing. I'm swimming against myself and my mom is referring to me as a cat.
On the blocks I use to get so excited that I constantly false started. I would wait for the gun shot, but the sugar rushing through my body was screaming "Go you maniac! Go!"
Splash
Damn. I also received like fuscia colored ribbons, which basically meant that I sucked so bad, that they ran out of proper colors. It always went something like this,
"And in our Exhibition round, Katie receives the teal ribbon"
