Pool Party
I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. I have no idea if that's early or late, I don't go around asking people when they learned how to swim. But I can tell you I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. Looking to get out of the hustle and bustle of Arlington especially as my sister and I were starting to get older, my family moved deeper into the Virginia suburbs with our new home placed within walking distance of all the major schools, a lake, and several neighborhood pools; the closest of which had a beautiful view of the lake from its wooden deck.
I had definitely been in pools before the age of five with those comedically oversized water wings on my arms but this was it, I was going to swim unaided. And, within a matter of weeks, I did; it's not all that hard to figure out. The one thing I've always had trouble with is the diving board. Every time I try to do a proper dive off one even all these years later I just smack right on the surface of the water so loud that everyone else at the pool stops what they're doing to see if they should send for a coroner. Curbside dives are fine but there's just something about doing one off a diving board.
Anyway, many a lazy summer day was spent at the pool lounging around trying to beat that Virginia heat with ice cream and chlorinated water quite a few times from sunrise to sundown. As elementary school started to wind down, I decided to change out the whole martial arts thing for joining the swim team. I was starting to gain some racial perspective and Tae Kwon Do just seemed too stereotypically on the nose. Also, it turns out chicks were more impressed saying you were on the swim team than that you could throw a decent tornado kick. I mean, that's some Dwight Schrute-level shit.
So from late elementary school to early high school, I swapped out my dobok and escrima for swim trunks and cheap plastic goggles. For that last month of school, I would walk straight to the pool and get right to practice. Once classes got out for the summer, I didn't get to really sleep in because swimmers always train early for some fucking reason; I don't make the rules.
I'm about as good a swimmer as I am a musician: Reliably competent, wasn't remotely close to any records but if you needed an anchor on a relay team or someone that could pull a decent breaststroke, I was always game. And it was cool because it felt like the vast majority of kids in the neighborhood were on the local teams so it was a good regular opportunity to see all the friends from school during the summer; like a block party centered around amateur competition.
By the time the season ended in August, it was getting high time to be my birthday once again and a lot of those elementary school birthdays were spent at the pool. You figure it was an easy option for my parents: Get the kids wiped out on water sports, order some cheap pizza and cake, and let the relatively placated kids unwind into the early hours of the morning watching movies and playing video games in the basement.
I ended up quitting swimming around the same time as I quit scouting for, as you can probably imagine, the same reasons. So for the second half of high school, the pool was still a place to hang out in the warmer months but I saw considerably less of it. Occasionally if we were planning hooky, we'd spend those mornings at the pool, not like the lifeguards minded. When I think back on the dog days of summer as a kid, the pool is a definite landmark in all that.
Guy with the last name Stone; does he sink or he does swim? Turns out that he swims.
Anyway, many a lazy summer day was spent at the pool lounging around trying to beat that Virginia heat with ice cream and chlorinated water quite a few times from sunrise to sundown. As elementary school started to wind down, I decided to change out the whole martial arts thing for joining the swim team. I was starting to gain some racial perspective and Tae Kwon Do just seemed too stereotypically on the nose. Also, it turns out chicks were more impressed saying you were on the swim team than that you could throw a decent tornado kick. I mean, that's some Dwight Schrute-level shit.
So from late elementary school to early high school, I swapped out my dobok and escrima for swim trunks and cheap plastic goggles. For that last month of school, I would walk straight to the pool and get right to practice. Once classes got out for the summer, I didn't get to really sleep in because swimmers always train early for some fucking reason; I don't make the rules.
I'm about as good a swimmer as I am a musician: Reliably competent, wasn't remotely close to any records but if you needed an anchor on a relay team or someone that could pull a decent breaststroke, I was always game. And it was cool because it felt like the vast majority of kids in the neighborhood were on the local teams so it was a good regular opportunity to see all the friends from school during the summer; like a block party centered around amateur competition.
By the time the season ended in August, it was getting high time to be my birthday once again and a lot of those elementary school birthdays were spent at the pool. You figure it was an easy option for my parents: Get the kids wiped out on water sports, order some cheap pizza and cake, and let the relatively placated kids unwind into the early hours of the morning watching movies and playing video games in the basement.
I ended up quitting swimming around the same time as I quit scouting for, as you can probably imagine, the same reasons. So for the second half of high school, the pool was still a place to hang out in the warmer months but I saw considerably less of it. Occasionally if we were planning hooky, we'd spend those mornings at the pool, not like the lifeguards minded. When I think back on the dog days of summer as a kid, the pool is a definite landmark in all that.
Guy with the last name Stone; does he sink or he does swim? Turns out that he swims.
