“I woke up at 4:55 this morning,” some guy on the swim team boasted.
“Oh, yeah? I was up at 4:50!” another chimed in. Hearing one talk about swimming soon attracted more. One by one, the swimmers found each other. Soon the interview ceased to be just that, and turned into a swim team meet up.
“We spend so much time with this team,” one member said. Eventually, the swimmers stopped answering my questions and just start spouting swimming inside jokes that no one understands, but they won’t stop saying them anyway. Upon interviewing a mother of a swimmer, she told us the sad toll the swim team can have on a young man’s developing brain. “We used to have such good conversations,” She remembered, “But now he just wants to talk to me about when Chipotle Wednesday is or scream the name ‘Wufan’ at random times.”
However, those who are lost are not without hope. One junior, who recently quit the team, gave this word of advice to those struggling with this addiction. He said, “Joey, stop calling me at 2:30 in the morning please. I need to sleep, I don’t want to talk to you. No, I don’t want to hear about how you have to be up in 2 hours.” Truly an inspiration to us all.
During an interview with one of the captains, I posed a serious question. “Why?” I asked. “Why will you not stop talking about swimming? Why do you feel the need to insert your swimming experiences into every conversation, even if they don’t apply?” The swimmer looked me dead in the eye and said “100 kick for time.” I have come to conclude that this may be a lost cause. No matter what, I have found that swimmers are unable to talk about anything but swimming.
This article is the first in a series, to be followed by “We Get it, You Wrestle” and “We Get it, You Are on DFDC.”
