Stretching

We'll segue this sunny Sunday morning from getting along with people (which will resume tomorrow) to getting along with one's self. Late in life I've stumbled upon the benefits of stretching before swimming exercize. Before swimming a mile and a quarter in various distances of kicking, freestyle, breaststroke, and backstroke I've acquired the habit of stretching. I do it slow, bored, vacant, diffident, dispassionate. I found, horrors, that you can touch the ground with your fingertips, easy, by cheating: push your shoulders forward as you bend down. Easy! After a few months of cheating I could, and you can, touch the ground in front of your toes with a couple of knuckles. Over time, provided you stay bored enough, I found you could balance on one bare foot beside the pool while pulling the other foot up to the buttock. Dealing with being, possibly, observed, is part of the relaxation routine. Fighting with the unwanted desire to 'look good' can be difficult.

I notice in men around 35 - 55 a need to go at swimming like Mike Tyson eating an ear. Possessed, nuts, so aggressive I can't help feeling they want to punish everyone for making them get in the pool. I swim lazy, and often win in my age division (old) because nobody else my age showed up. At one meet an opposing coach chided me for swimming too lackadaisical and insisted that swimming was a "power sport." But I don't enjoy it that way, Coach. I like the way the Dolphin or the Porpoise does it, for fun, with a smile.

This swimming stuff, if truth be told, is a private way, often, to commune with memories of my mother who died in an iron lung, Polio, when I was 14. To an uncommon degree she encouraged, and paid for, my swimming coaching and competing. She even sat in the empty stands on even a rainy day outdoors, and timed a training swim with her tiny, ladies wrist watch. When I was about age ten she timed my 800 meters training swim at thirteen and a half minutes. Have no idea if that was accurate. Probably not. Don't care. But, that she was there, well that's, well, everything.  

Where were we? I think I've lost the thread. Later, we'll get back to 'How to Get Along With People,' okay?

Barry