Survival

 

“I heard you say a couple of times that you’d survived….” a round, pasty middle-aged woman pauses on her way out of the locker room, her beady blue eyes questioning.

I’m at the mirror post swim and shower, trying to yank the tangles out of my hair. I glance over at her, my brush caught mid tangle, “Yeah… it was a battle out there in the pool today.”

She stares at me. Stupidly. She has no clue what I’m talking about. What was her swim like? I guess it wasn’t a battle. Or, she was one of the Clueless Ones. You know, those folks who jump into a lane without any idea how to swim, let alone circle swim.

This is what had happened to me today. I’m swimming along, in a nice rhythm, crowds all around me but so far, I’ve got my own lane. Then, turning at the wall, I stop to survey the family of 3 standing on deck staring down at me.

Damn! Do they all want to get into my lane?

“What’s going on?” I ask them.

Dad answers, “I think I can swim medium if I push it.” Oh, they’re reading the useless speed signs in front of each lane. No one pays attention to these. But I suppose if this is your first time here at Kennedy High Pool, you’d start with the sign in front of the lane.

I stare at him, then take in the wife and the teenager. “Are you all getting in this lane?”

“Yes,” he says, his goatee and gold earring belying his swimming ability. I am not sure why. He just doesn’t look like a swimmer. And, as it turns out, I was right.

“Well, then we need to circle swim,” I say, not asking if they know what this means. Everyone stays to the right side of the black line on the bottom of the pool, circling around it, letting faster swimmers pass at the wall.

“That sounds good,” he says, jumping in and starting a lazy sidestroke.

Shit, I think.

Then the wife gets in and starts a head out of the water breaststroke. She’s alone, in a warm lake. In the San Gabriel Mountains. The scenery is green and distracting. Jays flying overhead, the sun gentle on the water.

She is NOT in a crowded pool in Richmond!

I put on my fins and zoom past her, trying to splash her tranquility, but she is completely clueless, lost in a dream.

Now, when You Survived Woman queries me, I think of all the things I have survived: Adolescence, Cancer, Layoffs, Heartbreaks. Is today’s pool mayhem on par with these?

It feels like it. Or felt like it.

Laughing, I turn back to my brush, attempt to parse the wet strands from its teeth. “It was just a joke,” I say to her. “My swim was a bit crazy.”

“Well, all of the pools are closed around here. So, it is more crowded,” she offers, but her heart isn’t in it. I can tell that her swim was just hunky dory.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I agree, wishing she’d move on and stop staring at me like I had some secret story to divulge.

But I don’t. I was just voicing my frustration to my friends in the shower. They both knew what I was talking about, one laughing and nodding in agreement, the other rolling her eyes and sighing loudly.

Survival of the fittest? Darwin’s theory is common knowledge now. Am I going to survive the summer at the Richmond pools? Am I That Fit?

Only time will tell, in the meantime, Gloria Gaynor inspires me with her wailing refrain:

“I will SURVIVE!”

Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive