Not me, but close.

Once upon a time I was something of a swimmer, and tonight I tried for the second time to practice with a master’s team, which is something grownups who used to swim do when they want to keep at it. “Master’s,” in this case, is a very complimentary way of saying “hobby.” The other time I tried was three years ago, right after my daughter was born, but I had just gone back to work after my maternity leave and it was too hard to give up a whole evening with her. Also, my body was still a pile of goo from giving birth to her, so the whole foray didn’t last long.

So tonight I went back. It’s been more than two decades since I competed in any meaningful way, and it shows! The 900-yard warmup (a third each swim, pull, and kick) took me about half an hour, or a full half of the practice. Then I got to swim with a broomstick, which is apparently a thing. You grab a five-foot, duct tape-wrapped stick at either end and try to swim freestyle with it, and it kind of works like you’re paddling a kayak, only you’re trying not to drown. Then you turn over and do the same thing with backstroke. Meanwhile, the kids on the kids’ team are lapping you* six times over, and they’re using snorkels! Because that’s a thing too! Also, you don’t have to breathe after every stroke when you’re swimming breaststroke, and you can turn on your damn front when you’re doing backstroke turns. It’s anarchy! It’s like saying that after you kick the soccer ball four times, you can smack it with your hands. I can’t wrap my old lady brain around it.

On the plus side, you still use kickboards and pull buoys, and it just so happens that I’m packing my very own pull buoys: my middle-aged, post-baby thighs. They’re much denser than Styrofoam, but just as buoyant! Win. And coaches have changed from mustachioed jerks in too-short shorts who paced the deck and yelled at you to kind, understanding women just out of college who think I’m super for just showing up. More win.

But. The facilities. I grew up in suburban DC, where high schools did not have their own pools. We’d heard tell of schools in other parts of the country that had their own pools right in the building, but we dismissed it as myth. But it’s true! Since high school I’ve seen many schools with their own pools. And while it’s still cool to think that you can go to practice without carpooling after your last class to a municipal pool across town, the high school pools I’ve seen all have something in common: they are post-apocalyptic hellscapes that have not been cleaned, updated, or otherwise changed since the Great War. Actually, there is one area that is clean: the water, which is chlorinated to the point of being barely dilute Clorox, an environment that obliterates any foreign contaminant, as well as unprotected eyeballs.

Tonight’s pool was pretty typical. Behold pieces of the very typical locker room:

And this school is a pretty well-funded school. It’s big, it gets extra money by letting swim teams, adult education programs, and other outside groups use it when classes aren’t in session, and it’s in Massachusetts, which means that it’s better off, on average, than a similarly-sized school in Rhode Island. And yet…

The water hits you like tiny BBs. It hurts. It says, "rinse off and get out." This, on the other hand, says unchecked rust. Also, "I like."

Was there a nuclear war? Who wrote this, and what does she like? Or who? Did she like him/her/it, or did she like like him/her/it? Why did she stop? Were there zombies? Did the omega people rise up before she could finish?

My theory is that schools build pools for the sole purpose of neglecting them. They’re sacrifices to the funding gods. If someone accuses you of overspending, all you have to do is point to your crumbling, decrepit pool and say “Look at the corners I’ve cut! If our children shower without wearing flip-flops, their feet dissolve!” 

But why can't they sacrifice something else? Like driver's ed? Or math?

*Me.