I plan to go swimming one day this week, probably during the day while most people are at work, so that I have some relative privacy. I haven't been swimming as much as I used to since I moved to Arizona. That seems strange to me, as we technically have more days in the year that are potentially swim-worthy. But I haven't lived anywhere with a private pool, and that has made the difference. Apartment complex pools are always surrounded by apartments, and those apartments often have people looking out of the windows or standing on the balconies smoking and talking on their phones. I don't like being watched while I swim. Also, once you have a couple of weeks of 100+ degree heat, the water warms up and it is no longer pleasant to swim. And if you do, you can't really get out of the pool too easily, because the concrete around the pool is so unimaginably hot. So, in conclusion... I don't swim much.

Back in the Day (oh, that glorious Day we all remember!), I was always swimming, all summer long. Pictures of me growing up show me being so tan I was brown and my hair was lighter from the sun. I had all kinds of pool toys and would play games with my friends, like Mermaids or Water Extravaganza (a water-based talent show, usually incorporating early Madonna music). Swimming was, to me, the utter shit. I recently remembered the Shame of the Yellow Bathing Cap when I was about 9.

I went to a really crappy Girl Scout camp for a week one summer, along with my friend Tracy. We had spent entire days swimming at each other's houses in the summer, only getting out of the pool to eat, go to the bathroom, or change the radio station when we heard too much Duran Duran when we were in the mood for Howard Jones. Anyway, the point is we were excellent swimmers. We could dive, and swim laps, and find even the rustiest penny on the bottom of the deep end. So we weren't too worried when we got to Girl Scout camp and they announced that there would be a swim test to see which girls would be able to swim in the pool's deep end and using the diving board.

We did the swim test, which I can't remember at the moment, and I thought we did pretty well. I know it involved being able to tread water for at least two minutes or something like that. I have a vague memory of focusing my attention on some pine trees in my line of vision, so I wouldn't look over at Tracy and start laughing, which would make me drown, of course. Laughter in pool=drowning. Anyway, once all the girls had done the swim test, the counselors said we would be grouped into the following groups:

Red swim caps= very poor swimmers. These people could only stay in the shallow end, and could not go past a line of floating buoy-things.
Yellow swim caps= medium level of swimmers. You could swim up to the line, and venture into the middle part of the pool, but had to stop at the blue line of buoys, which signified the deep end of the pool.
Blue= the best swimmers. They had full access to the pool, and could also use the diving board.

Tracy and I were so angry when our names were called for the Yellow group. It must have been a mistake. After all, we knew we were the best swimmers there. We watched with extreme jealousy as a handful of girls got the coveted Blue swim caps and squeezed them down over their feathered hair. I felt like a little kid who needed supervision because I was too uncoordinated to keep myself afloat in the terrible deep end. Tracy and I spent our pool time being little bitches about the Blue group, particularly this one girl named Charity who seemed to be perfect in everything, and would do big show-offy dives off the diving board every chance she got. (At least we weren't in the Red group... but truthfully, those girls were the ones who were borderline Downs or retarded, anyway. I remember one very large girl having trouble just getting into the water without freaking out. And some of the other Reds couldn't swim at all, and just clung to the edge of the pool with a look of hollow disenchantment in their eyes--they didn't come to camp to be tormented with water.)

That camp really sucked. And I think that horseflies and bees tormented us while we were in the pool-- my guess is that they probably were drawn to the ugly yellow glowing swimcaps the most. "Buzz, buzz-- let's go mess with the Yellow Tards."