Sometimes the things we do to protect our health don’t work out exactly the way we expect.
Today didn’t start out that well for me. As I have attempted to do every weekday morning for the last 22 years, I turned up at the local swimming pool this morning. I went through the usual routine. Queued up at the desk for a spa tag and put my card through the machine to let the know I was paid up. Then through the self-opening door, past the kiosk picked up a kickboard for later then over to the pool.
There was my shock for the day. Instead of the 50m pool I was used to seeing, it was only 25m. (They have a ‘boom’ which they can move to the end of the pool to make it 50m, or to the middle of the pool to make two 25m lengths. It is supposed to be 50m in the mornings.)
A couple of years ago when I moved to this pool, it took me quite a while to swimming 50m lengths. Now the idea of turning every 25m just throws out my rythm completely. I just didn’t want to have to change my routine this morning. But there was no choice. Either swim 25m lengths or don’t swim at all.
Now people who know me well know that I can sulk when my routine is thrown out and I sulked this morning. I got in and swam my kilometre but I refused to enjoy it. They could make me swim but they couldn’t make me like it. I was going to make them pay. I was going to be miserable all day and somehow they would know it and they would be miserable as well.
I employed a similar sort of logic when I was a student at school. If I had a teacher I din’t like, I would deliberately fail the subject. It was my way of getting back at the teacher. Makes perfect sense to me.
Anyway, that wasn’t all tha happened at the pool this morning. Making the pool shorter means that the people swimming in the lane cross paths more often. I take great pride in the fact that I have reduced my 600m time from 14:30 to 12:40 over the last couple off months but I still swim in the slow lane. Another 20 seconds off the time and I reckon I’m qualified for the medium lane.
Regardless of what I think is ‘slow’ and ‘medium’ there are considerably faster swimmers who either think 55s for 50m is slow or are annoyed that us slow swimmers get a lane to ourselves. So there is one swimmer in this category who gets into the slow lane every morning. Don’t know why. He just does and he usually passes me a couple of times over my 600m. I have my little protest and don’t wait for him to pass at the end unless he is right on my tail but otherwise it doesn’t really bother me.
Not everyone is as sanguine about it however.
This morning another frequent fellow swimmer jumped in to our (slow) lane around 6:30 (this is all am remember) about 15 minutes after I started. We had a brief chat as we often do before he went to set off. This is when the first signs of trouble became apparent. Mr 55s was coming up for a turn just as Mr 6:30 was about to set off. Now etiquette would have it that you don’t start off just as someone is turning. Mr 6:30 either hasn’t read the unwritten etiquette book or came along this morning prepared to protest at Mr 55s swimming in the slow lane so he went to take off just as ’55’ was turning. There was a brief glare between them and this time ’55’ won out. ‘6:30’ waited.
Oh well, an incident averted I thought – although ‘6:30’ uttered a few choice words before he started his swim.
Not so the next time the two swimmers where in the same relative positions. This time ‘6:30′ judged his take off to be about one second before ’55’ completed his turn so they were both swimming in parallel. ’55’ wasn’t happy about it and stood up and walked past ‘6:30′ looking down at him but apparently not able to make eye contact.
The situation was repeated at the far end a few laps later and this time ’55’ had had enough. He stood up and bumped ‘6:30’. The two men then both stood up and started pushing each other. I don’t think any punches were thrown but it was an ugly scene. They had it out and each swam for a few more laps and then got out. I didn’t see either of them after that.
I was left wondering what it is about society today that leads to events like this? What is this underlying rage that comes out on the road, in the supermarket and now, in the pool? What is it that we are really angry at? As a civilisation, we in the West have never had it so good yet it seems we have never been less satisfied with our lot. We are safer than any generation before us but we spend more time in fear for our safety than ever before. We complain about rising crime rates even though long term crime rates are falling. It is thought we believe that as ordinary people should be able to live our lives without any fear for our property, our personal safety or illness. And if any of these things comes under threat then it must be someone’s fault.
We go to the swimming pool to keep healthy but then push our blood pressure up by venting our anger.
So just to lighten everything up a little here’s a nice piece from the Honolulu Advertiser (via Kottke)