Enough With The Pool, Already

Progress:  To continue toward completion; come along.


So I'm back at the pool where I seem to have most of my problems with people (not true, on second thought  -- I have plenty of really excellent problems with people wherever they lurk).   A wiser man might try a different type of exercise; maybe one that he could do all by himself on an uninhabited planet in a distant galaxy far, far away.  Unfortunately, swimming is the only exercise left for me that doesn't hurt everything on my body that still works, which is a diminishing list.  I'm sure my problems at the pool, which occur when most adult men are working at a job, make for fascinating reading with everyone very sympathetic to the difficult life that I'm forced to endure.  That's why I continue writing about them.  It's not about me anymore.


Anyway, let's set the stage: there are 3 double width lanes at the pool, which means that 6 people can comfortably swim at the same time.  Well, I don't mean to imply that they are swimming comfortably but rather that they fit into the lanes comfortably.  The 2 lanes I try to avoid are the outermost ones abutting the pool wall; the hard, hard, unforgiving pool wall.  When I arrived today there was a single person in each of the 3 lanes so I jumped into the middle lane, the non-wall lane, hoping to share with the man swimming there already and avoid repeatedly bashing my hands and feet on the hard, hard wall.  I could see that he had Down's Syndrome and was swimming with great purpose but having trouble staying to one side of the double lane.


"Could you swim over there?" he asked, pointing to one of the outermost lanes.  "I have trouble swimming in a straight line."


This pissed me off.  I pointed out that there was someone in that lane.  He ducked his head and continued to swim.  I'm assuming that he quickly saw that I was an ass and that he would be better off not wasting any more time with me.


I sighed dramatically and moved to the outermost lane.  Oy, what a saint.


I swim 4 sets of 15 laps for my exercise.  I was honked off my first set, so preoccupied with how unfairly I had been treated by that man that I bashed my hands and feet against the wall more frequently and with greater violence than I normally do.  During my second set my anger began to subside as I decided how to point out to him how unreasonable his very reasonable request had been.  For my third set I realized that I should keep my %$!! mouth shut while still nurturing some delicious, delicious, scrumptious self-righteous indignation.


The 4th set?  I was embarrassed for myself.  


I finished my work out and hopped into the sauna for a few minutes.  This swimmer finishes shortly afterward me and makes his way to the steps that exit the pool.  I quit thinking about myself long enough to notice a pretty fancy motorized wheel chair sitting at the pool's edge.  The man labors up the stairs slowly and with great effort, leaning heavily on the railing for support.  He composes himself for a minute before taking several rapid, unsteady steps on his significantly deformed legs to get to his wheelchair.  He belts himself in and buzzes off to the locker-room.


I'm a work in progress.  I'm glad that my higher power is kinder to me than I am to my fellows.  I'd have a tough go of it if I was getting what I deserved for my behavior.