Gather round, my readers, and I shall tell you a tale. A tale of an unsuspecting swimmer.
As some of you may know, my parents have a pool. Not a fun pool, though. No, they have an stupid exercise pool. It’s about three feet deep and basically just big enough to hold one person at the widest and longest points of their swimming stroke. Then you turn on the current and swim against it.
While I was housesitting last week, I decided to be good and make use of it since they don’t have a treadmill and I didn’t want to fall too far behind (Note: An endless pool is not a helpful substitution for treadmilling.). I’ll be honest, I’m not a super strong swimmer – I mean, I’m not going to drown, but when I turned it on, presumably to the setting last used by my mother, I fairly quickly found myself mashed up against the back wall. Mark Spitz, I am not! Also, I’m much better at the lazy strokes – breast stroke, upside-down breast stroke (aka lazy man’s back stroke), side stroke, and a proper back stroke – and, frankly, I do spend my time crouching in the middle, leaning into the current, and doing my best impression of the Rolls Royce lady.
But on this particular day, I was doing the lazy back stroke when my spidey sense kicked in. I seriously don’t know how I saw it because I wasn’t looking at the water and even if I had been, the current makes all sorts of little whorls and bubbles in the water, but somehow I did. SPIDER! And a not inconsequential one.
I honestly don’t remember getting out of the pool, but soon I found myself crouched on the edge of the tile. A frantic phone call to my parents ensued – my cry of ‘There’s a spider in the pool!’ was answered very wittily by my mom with ‘Is he swimming?’ Har har. As I was attempting to fish the very water-logged fellow out of the pool, the worry became how many times he’d gone around before I finally saw him – visions of him getting stuck in my hair or in my swimsuit haunt me to this very day!
But I did get in again the next day (though I couldn’t bring myself to do it that same day). So I’m counting it as a success.
My blank page 