January 13
I deliberately wore my
swimsuit beneath my clothes. My younger
sister Tiffani and I were the only people in the locker room, but to be naked,
I needed to surround myself with a curtain or a fortress.
I
considered myself a very sheltered person.
At twenty-six-years old, I still lived with my parents and even felt naïve
among people far younger than me. For
example, I stood in a blue one-piece swimsuit; Tiffani, seven years my junior,
wore a pink bikini. I had never worn a
bikini in my entire life. There was no precise
reason why; all I could say was it was out of my comfort zone. I did not even feel comfortable changing in
the locker room. After swimming, I would
towel the water out of my long ponytail and put my shirt and jeans back over
the wet swimsuit. It was more comfortable
to be damp and chlorine-rich than briefly flash anyone.
All
the better to push myself with these new experiences. Tiffani and I had run laps around the college
track several times together, but this was our first time visiting the pool and
trying a new exercise to help me with running.
The
locker-room pool door wouldn’t budge. “How
do we get in?” we asked each other.
Tentatively
walking back into the hallway in our swimsuits, we noticed a door at the end of
the hall with a heavy-duty combination bolt over the frame. The door was slightly ajar, with POOL
ENTRANCE printed in large black letters.
The
smell of chlorine brought back blissful childhood memories. I pushed past the padlocked door.
The
vivid blue water stood still. Even the
lifeguard chair sat empty. “Um, apparently
no one wants to swim at ten o’clock Tuesday morning.”
“Oh
wait, there’s someone over there,” Tiffani said. A man kneeled by the drinking fountain with
heavy tools. He did not look up as we
passed him.
I
felt too excited about accomplishing this week’s experience to care. Our bare feet cool on the damp cement, we
reached the shallow edge of the pool and stepped in slowly, the cold water shocking
us stiff. When at the deeper end, I
asked, “So you’d do this exercise when you were captain of your cross country
team?”
“Yeah,
pool running is basically running in place in water.”
I
kicked my legs, feeling uncoordinated and foolish. Less than a minute passed before I grabbed
the concrete edge of the pool. “This is tiring!”
“Yeah,
but you asked me to show you something new. Think about how it builds strength and gives
your joints a rest at the same time.”
The man at the drinking fountain continued to
avoid eye contact; I was relieved he wasn’t watching me thrash around like a
mime trapped in a submerged box.
A
white clock hung on the wall facing us. Wondering
how long I could pool run without stopping, I decided to go back to the locker
room and grab my glasses to sharpen the red second hand.
On
my way back to the pool, a middle-aged woman wearing a black long-sleeved business
suit walked slightly ahead of me. When I
reached the POOL ENTRANCE
door, the business suit blocked my passage.
“You
can’t get in through here.”
I
felt awkward, standing next to this fully clothed woman in my swimsuit. Too many experiences left me feeling a
terrible shame about the body, and this did nothing to help. “The pool doesn’t open for another hour—the times
are on the door,” the woman in the business suit said, closing the entrance with
the hours behind her.
I had been so
relieved that I didn’t have to pool run in front of other swimmers, I never
questioned the empty pool. Maybe I should have warned her that my sister
is still in there, I thought as I humbly retreated to the locker room. Why did
I not speak up more?
Tiffani
joined me, red-faced, a minute later. “We’re
gonna be banned from the pool for life!”
“What happened?”
“I
was pool running when this lady ran up to me shouting, “No, no, no!”
Tiffani’s vigorous thrashing in the deep-end
wouldn’t even vaguely resemble swimming; it would look like a maniac about to
drown. “I didn’t know!” my submerged
sister had tried to explain, certain the business suit was about to be ruined out
of anger and a hardwired lifeguard response.
“Now
our photos will hang above the pool with red slashes across our faces,” I said,
turning both of our fears into laughter.
As
we walked back into the hall wearing our clothes over our swimsuits, Tiff
started loudly joking, “No, no, no!” just
as a long black sleeve reached behind us.
“Here’s
a schedule for the pool,” she said as Tiffani’s face grew red again, but the
lady only smiled this time.
I
looked at the paper in my hand. Imagine
that, a schedule! We can’t just
go to a pool whenever we feel like it. I
started to feel sympathetic towards the woman in the business suit. She understood risks of unsupervised swimming
better than I did. It wouldn’t look good
for the college if there were dead bodies floating face down in the pool.
As
Tiffani and I reached her red convertible in the parking lot, I said, “Now I’ve
made my goal for three weeks,” excited despite my fresh embarrassment. The illicit pool running lasted only ten
minutes, but I also broke an entering by simply walking through a door and gave
Tiffani the most humiliating moment of her life, so there are actually quite a
few firsts here.
“So,
what’s your new thing next week?”
“Well,
I will . . . I . . . I have no clue. It’s
so hard finding new experiences.”
“And
you’re going to do this for a whole year?”
“Yes. Somehow, I will do it. Although I still can’t believe we just walked
into a closed pool. I’m afraid I’m going
to embarrass myself over and over this year.”
“Well,
at least you can embarrass me at the same time,” Tiff said with a smile.
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