Only a competitive swimmer can appreciate the multitude of hours spent looking at the bottom of a swimming pool – and, the obligatory fantasies that followed the seemingly endless hours of moving one’s body across a tiled surface while suspended in water…
Someone once wrote a book about “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” (if I remember correctly) – but at least the runner who-trains-for-long-distance gets to see some scenery. Some runners train in urban centers, while others train in Nature, and still others manage a combination of both; but they all get to look at scenery…while we swimmers…why we swimmers look at endless tiles…
To be sure, the monotonous pain of a swimming workout is broken up by the turn at each end of the pool, and if one is fortunate enough to be on a co-ed squad (which doesn’t happen on high school or college squads) – a male swimmer is afforded quick glances at the female mammaries, and the female swimmer gets her quick crotch shots. I recall those experimental days of guys accidentally thrusting their lead freestyle hand down the ladies’ speedos – and the ladies doing the same to the guys. Now-a-days the speedos are much too tight-fitting to pull this type of activity off. Back-in-the-day, however, the bathing suits were much looser.
But a male swimming on an all male team, well, he’s got to have some running fantasies going to get through four-to-five-hours-a-day of staring at tiles (and, ‘yes’ – that is how long the average competitive swimmer spends ‘out on the tiles’).
Swimmers’ fantasies must have something in common with buying lotto ticket(s) for the big jackpot: instead of something getting your through the night – you need something to get you through the water.
Of course I fantasized about getting particular girls…I also wonder if swimming didn’t set me off on my superhero worship (god how I loved my Marvel Comics back-in-the-day). And now that I think about it – my Marvel Comics addiction DID start right around the time I started swimming competitively, circa 1965.
But one also had the time to imagine how one might exact revenge on someone who had “pissed us off” – “drowning them” played a front-running image for me – which is a heckova lot better than being some poor-shot gang member who completely misses his target and kills some innocent.
I also longed to be king-of-the-world — as I tried to power myself from wall-to-wall in butterfly or freestyle fashion: with an endless parade of servants and slaves and ladies-in-waiting.
So You can see how the interminable sport of competitive swimming might lay the foundation for some real sociopathic/psychopathic imaginations – it definitely fueled mine – and the monotony of those endless tiles made drug and alcohol usage highly appealing as well.
I’ll never forget my entire high school boys swimming team “lighting up” in front of me – even the kids I thought would never need to get high: I could hardly blame them – but I knew that I could never coach them again.
If idle hands are the devil’s workshop – then the competitive swimmer’s hands were always kept busy; but, if the eyes are the windows-to-the-soul – then the competitive swimmer’s soul is hypnotized by row-after-row of tile and where-we-stop (with our fantasies) – nobody knows…