Due to my parent's instinctive fear that my sister and I would drown in our backyard pool while growing up, I was forced into swimming lessons at a very young age. While the many mouthfuls of water, freezing cold pools, and the endless chlorine stung eyes never seemed ideal to my 4-year-old self, I now realize that my parent's greatest fear influenced my largest passions in life. Swimmers comprise a very unique community that can only be understood by other people who have spent the majority of their lives in a pool or on a pool deck, but here is a glimpse of what life is like through goggles:
1. Swimming is a love-hate relationship.
Whether they have endured the sport for many years or even just a few minutes, any swimmer can tell you that swimming is the worst and best sport to partake in. Like most swimmers, while I am at practice all I want to do is stop swimming and go home. However, I always find that whenever I am away from it, the pool is the only place I want to be.
2. The Olympics are more important than the Super Bowl.
Any swimmer can tell you that Olympics swimming is the most important sporting event of all time. Yeah, the Super Bowl might be great, but nothing can beat the adrenaline rush of watching a beloved swimmer win gold by a millionth of a second.
3. Swimmers cannot remember a time where they didn't know how to swim.
I cannot remember learning to swim, almost as if swimming was just something that I was born knowing how to do. The only memory I have of lessons is when my instructor, Ms. Colleen, taught me that when swimming backstroke, I had to pretend to balance a birthday cake on my stomach and blow out the candles to breath. Swimming has always been a part of my life and it is very hard to think that there was a time where I didn't even know it existed.
4. Practice is the worst, but we make the best of it.
There is nothing worse than coming into the wall barely able to breathe and hearing your coach yell "on the top" with 45 seconds on the clock. From endless pyramids, distance sets, and never-ending sprints, practice is never a breeze, to say the least. From start to finish, practice is an intense mixture of foggy goggles, uncatchable breath, and atrophied muscles. However, swimmers can make even the worst practice a good time. Goofing around with teammates in your lane seems to make any practice a good one!
5. All of your summer jobs have been at a pool.
Swimmers seem to never be able to part from the pool. Many of our summer jobs include lifeguarding, coaching a swim team, or giving swim lessons. Pool jobs are ideal jobs because you get to go straight from practice to work, your entire team most likely staffs the pool, and you get paid being in an environment you already love wholeheartedly.
6. Tan lines do not fade.
There's no question that a swimmer can indefinitely be identified by their tan lines. The classic one-piece tan line with the huge white "x" across the shoulders, a pasty stomach, and a giant tan dot in the middle of our backs is a dead giveaway that we spend our summer days in swimsuits. Not to mention the horrid cap and goggles tan lines that are inevitable, especially for backstrokers like me who spend practice on their back soaking up the rays.
7. Swim meets are always an experience.
Saying that swim meets are always an adventure is an understatement. Swim meets are a whole ordeal in themselves. Nothing beats the long bus rides, fun hotel nights, and team camaraderie of an away meet. Swimmers spend the whole day lounging around on a soaked pool deck for hours, waiting for their races that last anywhere from a mere twenty seconds to a couple of minutes depending on the event. The exhilaration, the cheering, and the team spirit are always in full effect at swim meets. Nothing beats being able to see all of your hard work paying off.
8. Swimmers always bring the pool with them.
There are always three prominent distinguishers of a swimmer that never seem to fade, even when the pool is no longer in sight. The first distinguisher is wild hair. As a swimmer, my hair is a never-drying, sopping wet, tangled mess. Not only is it normally unkempt, the chlorine often changes the color and texture of a swimmers hair as well. The second distinguisher is the goggle marks. Nothing says "I'm a swimmer" quite like the raccoon-like, red suction cupped marks that are permanently a part of a swimmer's face after practice. The last distinguisher of a swimmer is the overwhelming aroma of chlorine that surrounds every swimmer. No matter how many showers are taken, the smell of chlorine will never be washed away from a swimmer.
9. Swimwear is high fashion.
Half of the wardrobe of any swimmer is comprised of team shirts, meet shirts, and other gear that brands them as a swimmer. Aide from clothing alone, swimsuits are perplexing oddities in themselves, especially technical suits. Every swimmer knows the distress, hardships, and struggles of squeezing into a technical suit for a swim meet. Knee skins are about the size of Barbie suit, yet gigantic, buff swimmers are expected to squeeze into them for one or two races. All swimmers know what the locker rooms look like during a big meet: hundreds of swimmers from different teams spending close to an hour helping other swimmers squeeze into their tech suits. Nothing beats the accomplished feeling of a swimmer, leaving the locker room sweaty, crying, but atlas dressed in their tech suits.
10. Your swim team is as close as family.
Any swimmer can tell you that their team is their family. As a swimmer, I spend countless hours with my teammates, during practices, meets, team events, etc. Swimmers become very close with their team, and the bond they share is unlike any other. They are the ones who know every little detail of your life, the ones support and love you through everything, and the ones who cheer the loudest the moment you dive into the pool.
