Saturday, April 21, 2012

Swimming for Lane

My mom had a box of stuff she found in the house and she had us go through it on Easter. I found a few things that sparked ideas about stories.

I'm going to start with the swim card I found. It reminds me of when Dad was on the swim team in High School.

Dad attended Lane Technical High School and at the time it was an all-boy school. Because the school was all boy the swim team did not have suits, they swam in the nude. I guess the idea was that they would be faster.

One time they were at an away meet and the Lane swim team was gathered in their locker room (clearly not the dressing room) and got a rousing pep talk from the coaches. The captains got them further fired and led them to the locker room door full of, well let's just say pep.

They all lined up; cheering and chanting they made ready to burst into the pool room. The captains opened the door and ran out, followed by everyone else.

The trouble was that this school they were swimming against was large and rich enough to have bleachers looking on the pool. The bleachers were full of parents and siblings, some of them even sisters, and maybe a few grandmothers to boot.

The captains stopped dead in their tracks and tried to back pedal. The rest of the team pressed forward, unaware of the problem, but ready to beat the world.

The result was a dogpile of naked teen boys just inside the locker room door.

They had to quickly find suits or they would forfeit the meet. They did, but the suits were from a grade school or something because they were all too small. They did win the meet I think because they wanted to get out of those small suits as soon as possible.