Zen, aquatics, and a fate worse than death
I love working out at the pool on Saturday. No work related stress to burn off. No need to feel rushed. It’s just me and the water, I jump in and everything disappears. External stimulus is reduced to the sound of my arms hitting the water and the occasional bubble going past my ear as I exhale. All I can see is the black line down the center of my lane. As I cross into the area of the pool under the skylight, the world is all blinding light and reflection. When I cross back into the shade it’s cool and calm. I perform a well executed flip turn and head back up the pool again, turn and come back, turn and return. After a while my brain starts to shut down non-essential functions. I stop counting the laps. I become a perfect swimming machine. There is no past. There is no goal. All my faculties are devoted to perfecting my movement through the water and unnecessary thought ends.
On the rare occasions that I reach this Nirvana-like state; when I’m not thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner or if I have work to finish, it can take me a moment to acclimate myself when I’m done swimming. So imagine my surprise and alarm as I finished my workout one Saturday morning to the sound ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. I stood panting at the end of the pool, confused, as the warble of Billy Ray Cyrus echoed weirdly around the swimming pool.
What’s happening? Where am I? Who am I? Have I crossed over? Oh God. I’m dead. And if 90s contemporary country is playing in the afterlife… I must be in Hell. Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten my roommate’s last slice of pizza. That was the final straw and now I’m stuck listening to this for the rest of eternity. I’ll bet they’re going to play Brooks and Dunn next. I hate the ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’.
And then I glance very slowly to my right. There, in all their spandex glory, are 15 large aged women with buoyant foam tubes wrapped around their gargantuan waists. They are bobbing back and forth in the water, two lanes over from me. These monstrous women wave their arms back and forth to the beat of this satanic music. A slightly older, slightly slimmer, woman is pacing back and forth on the deck next to the pool, shouting directions at them. “Feel the burn! Work harder ladies!” OhdearGodinheavenIaminhell. It’s all I can do to stifle the screams bubbling up in my burning lungs. Oh no, the leader sees me. There are only two plastic lane dividers between me and the pack of “Whopper Demons”. Any minute now they are going to tear across the pool, beat me senseless with those foam tubes, and chew the tasty, exercised, flesh from my body while flames shoot from their eyes. NoooooOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Someone splashing the wall in the lane behind me snaps me out of it. Slowly, reality creeps back in. It’s only a water aerobics class. The music has changed to Lionel Ritchie. They’re not going to devour my delicious flesh. I’m not dead. These women are just doing as I am, getting some exercise. But they do it to Billy Ray Cyrus.
They exercise to ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’
And that’s when I realize that there are places worse than hell.
Labels: Exhibit A in the case for my damnation, non sequitur
posted by DC Viking at 10:07 AM
2 Comments:
"Whopper demons" - ha! Is your pool open already?? Is it indoor? Ours doesn't open until Memorial Day!
I swim at an indoor at the Sport and Health. I'd prefer the Y for economic reasons, but I haven't found a good one in close proximity. Where is there a decent outdoor for lap swimming?
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