Out of My Element

With my foot still giving me pains and keeping me down for two days, I decided I would try swimming at the gym.  I've never been much of a pool person.  I am the epitome of Air: I'm a Gemini, in my head all the time, prefer the wind to be blowing and have a penchant for breathing.  As it would turn out, there's not a whole lot of air to be had underwater.  Ergo, Tee is not much of a swimmer.

To my luck, there was an open lane available for me to pretend I know what I'm doing in the water.  I began praying not to look as though I was drowning and while I tried to catch my breath after one lap of intense dog-paddling, a couple sauntered in.  They began chatting it up and as I crawled my way back through the water I caught snippets that led me to believe these two were in a bit of a lovers' quarrel.  About that time, Pro Swimmer Barbie slipped in to the lane beside me and began to talk about swimming in a very official manner between laps.  I had no idea if I was doing the breast-stroke, freestyle, or just frantically trying to keep water out of my nose.  But there she was every time I paused, bubbly talking about goggles, strokes and chlorine.

Interestingly, as I coached myself to just keep going, tidbits of the couple's conversation revealed it was escalating with every erratic, uncoordinated slap of my arms on the water.  Finally, determined to no longer be the scene of attention, the man stood up and announced that he had to go (regretfully) to a meeting.  In response, the girl had a couple of four-letter words to grace us all with and shouted that he had had a meeting last week and he was just brushing her off.  Apparently, there is a maximum allotment for meetings each month.  Who knew?

Meanwhile, the swimming cheerleader next to me was still mentioning different strokes and techniques all the while I was just trying to wait until I broke the surface before attempting a breath.  So, I finally broke down and embarrassingly admitted to the woman, with her own floatation devices, that I hadn't actually been in a pool other than to have a water fight in many years.  Just then, to punctuate my whole experience, the abandoned pool-side girl began crying and stormed off as her man escaped to the men's locker room.  I fought my way down the length of the pool one last time and as I scrambled gracefully out of the water, I thought to myself: "Man, I've got to come to the gym more often."