Summer Swim Teams: A Lesson in Insanity

Part Two

Summer swim teams offer a variety of happenstance and a mixture of fun and laughter. So do family holidays, but you know how that goes . . .

So event after event is made up of heat after heat after heat after heat, for stroke after stroke after stroke, for various age groups. (The least they could do is throw in some sea creatures -- serpents, eels, snapping turtles -- to erase the monotony of everyone's kid swimming in a straight line down the pool.) . You can waste an entire evening waiting for your offsprings particular event. In fact . . .  one does!

I took particular interest in the little children's events, not only because the chillin's are so cute, but also because I have a child who is probably the cutest, and she competed and I stood and hollered loud enough to collapse a lung. I am confident that it helped, somehow, even only for angst relief.

Following each completed race, parents by the score leap over the very barriers designed to keep them away in the first place, and -- important here -- knocking judges and timers out of the way . . .   to wrap their little darling up in a towel (for fear of an Arctic wind whipping through the recreation center). No matter how poorly they performed, the parent must heap bountiful praise on their offspring while the Olympics are envisioned.

Then they are whisked off to celebrate with 250 grams of fat in snack bar delights.

Somewhere, throughout all of this madness, there is at least one person who actually knows what is going on. This person has the title "Clerk of the Course" bestowed on them. Admittedly, I used to think that they announced the swimmers to report to "the Clerk, of course", which seemed rather fitting, given the power that they wield.

Clerks of the Course have a vast amount of swim meet knowledge and experience. They must also have either ingested hallucinogenic drugs, or perhaps have never taken them, I forget. It takes something malformed in their past to make them want to move towards qualification for this position. It takes years to become a Clerk of the Course, because one must have a thorough understanding of swimming regulations, swim meet operation standards, total quality management, and a recipe for chocolate chip brownies that will help to pay for new starting blocks..

The general pattern is that by the time an individual has put in enough time and sweat equity to become a Clerk of the Court, their own children have grown, graduated from college, and produced offspring, having given up swimming years before. Most Clerks are somehow not aware of this, and because of the invaluable service they provide to swim teams across the land, it is a felony to inform them of these facts. Their contribution is simply too great.

Swim meets do end. Little kids swim, older kids swim, four strokes of different distances are all performed for friends and family. Finally, mercifully, it is all over. As the parking lots empty, mini-vans give way to neighborhood adolescents struggling to return home from their own playgrounds before sunrise. With children asleep in the back, parents tend to get a wee bit philosophical. It is, however, difficult to wax poetically on swim meets.

I really did enjoy it as a situation where adults collectively organize to produce competition for our kids. I do like to see children trying to win races; I think that is good for all. I like watching latency-staged pre-adolescents experiment with social rules and boundaries.

I am not sure how I am with two commonplace swim meet happenings: the applause for the child who finished four minutes behind everyone else and has to keep swimming while their competitors have caught a flight to Maine.

Also, of particularly gloomy perspective, for every five kids whose parents are right there for them when they exit the pool, there is the one child who emerges -- freezing -- to no one. For all the moms and dads in attendance, this young stroker is on his own; they are easy to spot but heartbreaking to watch.

With one meet under my belt, I am a vet. I will subsist this summer on a steady diet of loud noise and snack bar cuisine. I will learn thirteen new ways to deny "just one more dollar" to my offspring. I will deal with the long-term affects of chlorine.

Next: Those hilarious sweep judges, starters, timers and table workers! 

And . . .  "this thing has a mind of its own!"