The Pool

I had to write this for English. And I liked it, so...here.

The Pool
It was somewhere between the last day of school and the first. Sometime between the warm but tolerable early morning and the scorching mid-afternoon. I sat, as I did every day that summer, on a lifeguard stand, elevated high above the lap swimmers- high enough that no one would approach me, but not so high as to look completely unapproachable. The patrons of the pool were typically unmemorable, save for the few I called The Regulars. The Regulars came every morning, like clockwork, and while they never actually talked to each other, they swam side by side, sharing small smiles of empathy and recognition, and always, always the lap lanes. From my perch above the water, The Regulars were discernible only by the varying colors of their swim caps and suits, which I used like name tags to identify them. Floral One Piece used a kick board but never fins, and Black Swim Cap took direction from Harry, the early morning adult swim team coach. Harry spoke in a monotonous drawl, his voice congested from fall straight through to spring. On several occasions, his voice lulled me into trances as I watched the swimmers stroke back and forth, their back muscles coiling and stretching as they moved steadily across the pool. It was on one such occasion that Pink And Blue Speedo stopped her usual routine of slow breaststroke to try to the more adventurous butterfly. I watched as she lifted her torso out of the water and kicked, her arms rotating at her side. From the get go she struggled, her shoulders not quite strong enough to propel her through the water, and her legs not quite coordinated enough to move in unison. As she neared the deep end her strokes grew more frantic. I reached for my whistle. She slowed down, her legs sinking below the surface of the pool, and I stood, ready to jump in and save her. But she reached the wall before I could and climbed out. She walked, defeated, to the locker room, and was replaced by Grey Goggles in the lap lane.

That's it. Yeah, it definitely alludes to my post about backs. Only the loyalist of the loyal blog readers know that. (Kevin Pellicone, this is note number nine hundred)

I'll write more later.

Kelly