All coaches quickly learned
never to put my brother with me in the same lane. We would race each other and
then try to pass each other, grabbing an ankle and pulling backward, or pushing
down on the flat of the other’s back and swimming over.
I was a competitive swimmer
with all heart and no talent.
My brother was a swimmer
who was forced by my mother to join in the interest of weight control and
hygiene.
No matter how hard I tried,
my sister and brother breezed their way to ribbons and medals and “A” times,
while I immersed myself in “The Physics of Swimming,” watching swim meets, and
fantasizing about going to a transformative swim camp in Florida, and hopeful
fictions of growing my petite hands and feet into retractable flipper-like
appendages.
Needless to say, I was not
able to genetically or biomedically engineer myself, but I did learn how to
deal with disappointment, and how to lose races – gracefully and ungracefully.