Pool Fools

We Pool Fools develop a strange, almost family-like relationship. We look out for each other and if someone doesn't show up for a while we ask anxiously:
"Have you seen X recently?"
We are not all old and not all hypochondriacal but we are mostly sufficiently 'with it' to recognize that a common reason for failing to show up is inability due to death or disease.
Now, don't get me wrong. We are not all living in fear of a visit of the Grim Reaper. Far from it. Most of us will do justice to our visit from him, when he catches up with us. No, we want to know that our erstwhile friends haven't found a better swimming pool or, (perish the thought), a more fascinating group of swimmers / bathers to immerse themselves in the water with.
As I stepped into the pool today I encountered a woman of about my own age who was a regular swimmer.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"Oh not too bad," she answered. "It is getting a little harder to drag myself out of bed and get my joints moving. She laughed and added, "I think I'm going to try a little marijuana."  
She wasn't joking.
"Better be careful, " I said. "Some of it can be pretty strong nowadays".
"Oh my friends and I have researched it pretty well." she explained. "Some of them have tried it out already. The just use the mildest stuff. They seem to think it's quite good. I haven't tried it yet."

None of us had seen Laura for months. She was well known to most of us. She was an exceptional swimmer with a lot of style who had put in forty laps of stylish and energetic swimming three days weekly. Not bad for a woman
with grown up grandchildren! Then I spotted her, but instead of cutting gracefully through the water as was her style, she was exercising carefully in the slow Lane and moving with great difficulty and discomfort.
"What happened to you," I asked. She looked awful.
"I was in an accident," she said. "I was nearly killed."
"What happened ?" I asked.
"We were going on a Trans Canada trip and I was riding on the back of his motorcycle," she said.
I gulped, (silently I hoped), at the prospect of this Grandma, no matter how young, riding pillion on a motorcycle on a cross Canada trip.
"We turned off the highway to check into a hotel, when the bike skidded out from under him and I flew off the back and that's all I remember. "
"You're lucky!" said I.
"Yes," said she, " I fractured vertebral bones in my neck. The doctor said I was really lucky that I didn't damage my spinal chord and become paraplegic! I'd rather have been killed outright than that."
"You were very lucky."
"Yes, I'm going to get a hundred per cent recovery no matter how hard I have to work!"
"Good," I said, noting that she had a long way to go . I moved on so she could carry on with her program.
I swam a few lengths and was just getting into my stride when Rick waved at me from two lanes to my right.. "Hey!" he yelled, "Haven't seen you for a while. Come over here and have a chat."
I sidled over two lanes. Rick likes to stay in the swimming lanes out of the line of vision of his athletic wife, pumping weights in the glass-walled exercise room upstairs from where she is able to keep an eye on him.
"She gets quite upset if she sees me just sitting chatting. She doesn't think I should stop swimming at all!"
Rick, probably in his early seventies now, went to University in the States on a football scholarship. He had done well but ended up with significant musculo-skeletal damage to his knees and ankles. He has difficulty walking but is quite comfortable pottering around in the water but is not committed to actually exercising. His wife keeps a strict eye on him to make sure he keeps moving, so he stays out of her line of sight as much as possible! I didn't keep him and just continued doing my laps.
 
Swimming laps can get boring at times so I have a few projects additional to elucidating the biographies of my fellow swimmers to keep me occupied while I complete my mandatory 'time'. I adhere to this quite obsessively, knowing full well that if I started wittling it down it would dwindle down to nothing in no time.
One of my favorite occupations is checking my cognitive prowess to reassure myself there is no significant deterioration setting in. I like to check my mathematical skills which were never great. As I watch the digital clock I do various calculations centering around how many seconds I have been swimming so far and how many more to go. Unfortunately the sequence sometimes breaks down mid-calculation and I have to start over again...... And again! When I succeed a couple of times I quit while I'm ahead and move on to something else, after congratulating myself appropriately.
I find learning a poem that I have been fond of particularly rewarding and useful. Firstly it is rewarding in and of itself, secondly, it is very much more impressive at Pen Club, when trying out someone's latest pen purchase to scribble a quatrain or two of Omar Khayyam rather than the traditional "The quick Brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
My other diversion is thinking about my next blog.   I have four or five regular readers who I would not want to disappoint.
  So, thinking about my next blog content, Marathon Man and Dutch Jane spring to mind. I haven't seen them for a while.
So, perhaps next week - or next month, I'll tell you about them!!
Be sure to come back!! Or not!