Several years ago, when I was about fourteen, I joined the school swim team. I did this because people kept badgering me to do something athletic, and I have always enjoyed swimming, so I figured it couldn’t be too bad.

I found out very quickly that what I enjoyed doing in the water was not swimming. I enjoyed splashing around, jumping off of docks and swimming about three yards at a time. I liked the water, not the exercise. This enlightenment notwithstanding, I decided to give this swim team thing my all anyway. I did laps for three to four hours a day, for several weeks until my body was more toned than it has ever been, and I had developed deep, dark circles under my eyes due to the over work. I started eating everything in sight, because that much swimming truly works up an appetite. I even bought the team swimsuit two sizes too small, because it was the aerodynamic thing to do. I shaved my legs more in those few months than I think I have the rest of my life. I slapped the edge of the pool and screamed my lungs out in encouragement to my fellow team members at our meets, even though they really couldn’t hear me from under water anyway. I even got naked twice a day in a locker room filled with other women! In short, I totally played the part, and I think I was fairly convincing, up until it was my turn to race.

Something interesting about me is that although I love to win, and I thrive on being “the best”, I don’t thrive on competition. Actually, let me rephrase that with a little more honesty: I am completely chickenshit when it comes to competition. My legs quiver, my mouth goes dry and I just pray to get through it without making a total fool of myself. Most of the time, I don’t even care about doing well, I just want to live through it. My first race was no exception.

As I took the starting block, my mother was in the stands cheering me on. To fully understand the rest of this story, it should be noted that at the beginning of every race some yells, “Ready!” and then there is a loud, electronic “BWAAAAMMM,” which stands for “get set”(lean over and put your butt in the air so you are ready to dive off of the block), and then someone fires the gun which means, “get in the water and start swimming”.

My mother watched me shivering on the starting block. The guy said “ready”, and I was. Then that buzzer went off and scared the living daylights out of me, and I fell off the block and into the pool. The person behind my mother commented to a friend, “wow, she’s nervous,” as I climbed out of the pool and got back into position, dripping wet, and very shaken.

Once again, the guy hollered, “ready”, and then the buzzer screeched loudly, and I, once again, fell off my block, into the pool, in fright. The commentator behind my mother said, “wow. She’s really nervous!” My mother, who hadn’t publicly admitted that she was the mother of the soggy ball of nerves climbing back onto the block for the third time, had to agree.

This time, I prepared myself better. After all, falling in once was understandable, twice, humiliating, but a third time, well, a third time would be just inexcusable. This time when the buzzer sounded, I held on to the block with a death grip, and when the gun went off, I left my block a good two seconds after the rest of the competitors, for fear of falling in again. I was so flustered I ended up being disqualified because my foot scraped the bottom of the pool during one of my laps, so an auspicious beginning, it wasn’t.

Needless to say, I didn’t last long on the swim team. Oh, I had a few good races (mostly the short, relay races where the win didn’t depend entirely on me), but on a whole, I was losing weight and beginning to look just plain sick from all of the exercise. After being encouraged by several teachers, family and friends to quit, I did. And I didn’t miss it at all.