I<\/span>t\u2019s the final day of my stay in the Cayman Islands, and I\u2019m a long, wet mile from my towel, a cold beer, or land.\u00a0 I can make out the small figures of my wife, sister-in-law, and nephews on the beach each time my head comes out of the water for air. I\u2019m waving to them with my right arm, but they don\u2019t seem to notice.\u00a0 I consider waving both arms to try to get their attention, but remember from the safety briefing that flailing your arms is the signal that you are drowning.\u00a0 And I am not drowning \u2013 at least not yet. I am participating in the 13th annual Flowers Sea Swim, renamed the Flowers Recovery Mile Sea Swim this year to focus on providing relief to the victims of Hurricane Ivan.<\/p>\n

I had no intention of entering a swimming race here \u2013 planned to do little more than let sand accumulate around my feet \u2013 until I saw an ad on the television in the condo just five days ago.\u00a0 Perhaps it was my irrational fear of beach boredom, or the fact that I\u2019d watched several people swimming that afternoon, or just the beautiful, crystal blue water of the Caribbean lying outside the door.\u00a0 I announced to my assembled family-in-law that I thought maybe I would do that.\u00a0 My mother-in-law, who arranged this entire vacation, is far too kind to do anything but express bemused and delighted interest at whatever nonsense I spout, but my wife looked at me like I\u2019d been out in the sun too long \u2013 and I had.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like I had never swum long distances before.\u00a0 I swam \u201ccompetitively\u201d in high school and had gone on several short-lived, fitness-inspired swimming kicks in the many years since.\u00a0 The truth is, however, that the last of those kicks ended as many months ago as there are years since I graduated from high school: 20!\u00a0 And while I still knew that in theory I could swim a mile, the longest I\u2019d ever gone without touching bottom or a wall was 25 yards \u2013 the length of a typical high school swimming pool.\u00a0 Swimming in open water was going to be a bit of an adjustment.<\/p>\n

Lucky for me, this was no ordinary water.\u00a0 The Caribbean\u2019s deep blue lured like a siren.\u00a0 I imagined gap-toothed pirates of old, whose parents had not been engaged enough to sign them up for swimming lessons, jumping from plundered Galleons to their deaths just to be in this magnificent water.\u00a0 If ever I was going to do an open water swim, this was the place.\u00a0 Even if there weren\u2019t lane lines, the clarity and visibility of the water was better than any YMCA pool I\u2019d ever been in.<\/p>\n

The next morning I scampered down the beach and into the water as fast as I could in the hope that no one would notice I was wearing a Speedo.\u00a0 No one wants to look at a body that is anything less than perfect in such a thing, let alone one that is largely covered in hair.\u00a0 It\u2019s perfectly fine, if not exactly flattering to wear a Speedo during lap swim at the local pool, but it is something altogether different to sport one at the beach.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want my in-laws thinking I was European.<\/p>\n

I picked out two buoys that looked like they were about 100 yards apart.\u00a0 This would be my oversized swimming pool.\u00a0 I made sure one was close to shore just in case I had a heart attack or something and needed to stand up.\u00a0 The truth was, I was on the most perfect stretch of beach I had ever laid eyes on \u2013 Grand Cayman\u2019s Seven Mile Beach \u2013 and I could have simply swum in either direction for an hour, or, more likely, as long as I could, and be assured of a mile or as close as I could physically come to it.\u00a0 Somehow, though, I found comfort in the idea of a defined distance.<\/p>\n

As my wife\u2019s family looked on from books, beer, sandcastles and games of Frisbee, I began my training: dunked my head into the muffled, isolated world that is distance swimming, ignored the burning sensation in my shoulders, putting one arm in front of the other, and slowly traversing the distance between the buoys. \u00a0After fifteen exhausting lengths I called it quits deciding that a \u201cmetric mile\u201d was plenty for my first day of training. I got out of the water and donned a pair of surf trunks before staggering over to where my father-in-law was sitting in the shade of a tree.\u00a0 He commended me on my swim and kindly offered a bottle of water.\u00a0 After slurping salt water for nearly an hour, it was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted.\u00a0 I asked him how far apart he figured the two buoys were, and was disappointed to hear about 75 yards, but since he\u2019s an avid golfer, hunter, and football fan, I trusted his judgment.\u00a0 I would do better tomorrow.<\/p>\n

The Flowers Sea Swim was started by a fifty-seven year old Grand Cayman business mogul named Frankie Flowers.\u00a0 The family business empire was built on bottled water, concrete blocks, and real estate.\u00a0 Surprisingly, given his home, it was running, not swimming, that was Frankie\u2019s true love \u2013 surprising because there is a lot more water than road around the Cayman Islands.\u00a0 Knee trouble eventually drove the dedicated distance runner into the water.<\/p>\n

Though the most popular, fielding up to 600 swimmers, the Flowers swim is not the only or even the oldest open water swimming competition on Grand Cayman. The first organized swim took place in 1980, and was three miles long. Today the Flowers Sea Swim is considered a premiere event and attracts Olympic and world champion swimmers from the United States and beyond.<\/p>\n

The second day of my training went much the same as the first, though this time I bumped into \u2013 literally \u2013 a fellow racer in training.\u00a0 Swimming is not a very social sport in that it is difficult to talk while you are doing it without inhaling a lot of water, so it was nice of this guy to stop and talk to me. His accent identified him as one of the surprising number of Irish living on the island.\u00a0 According to him, it was half a mile from the Governor\u2019s house \u2013 a colonial vestige still hanging on in some capacity I was not entirely clear on \u2013 to the public beach just past our condo.\u00a0 He assured me the race was good fun. There is something about someone telling you about fun in an Irish accent that makes it impossible not to believe.<\/p>\n

By the end of the week I was managing mostly uninterrupted miles in about 40 minutes and was feeling pretty good about my prospects.\u00a0 I had also managed an amazingly symmetrical sunburn pattern on my back that looked like Batman\u2019s symbol.\u00a0 Between my training and snorkeling trips to \u201cStingray City\u201d and other local points of underwater interest, my back had seen a fair bit of sun.\u00a0 Conversations with other swimmers up and down the beach bolstered my confidence that I could at least finish the race.<\/p>\n

The morning of the race I felt nervous, a conditioned response from the swimming meets of my youth.\u00a0 Certainly there was nothing to be nervous about; I was absolutely capable of swimming a mile, and, according to the official rules of the race, though running along the bottom was forbidden, stopping to rest was perfectly acceptable.\u00a0 As she applied the initial coat of sunscreen to my back, my wife assured me that I didn\u2019t have to do it if I didn\u2019t want to, and that if I got tired I could just quit.\u00a0 This had the presumably unintended effect of making me feel rather old.\u00a0 Of course she was right, but now that I\u2019d told everyone I was going to do it, I had to.<\/p>\n

The race didn\u2019t start until 2:30 that afternoon, which gave me plenty of time to accompany my father-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew on a snorkeling trip to Eden Rock, near the Georgetown harbor.\u00a0 A morning of snorkeling was probably not, I realized, the recommended preparation for a swimming event, but the underwater scenery of the islands was simply too good to pass up.\u00a0 Besides, this was vacation, and I had become resigned to the fact that I was probably not going to take home the $20,000 purse for being able to set a new world record that afternoon.<\/p>\n

After a truly beautiful display of coral and creatures, including a barracuda, our snorkeling party removed our flippers and headed back home for lunch. \u00a0This was a subject I had put some thought into: what would constitute a good lunch before swimming a mile in the ocean?\u00a0 Sushi seemed both right and wrong somehow, but unavailable in any case.\u00a0 A Google search of distance swimming training turned up an entire subspecies of geek-dom I never knew existed.\u00a0 Most of the entries were too boring to actually read, but the accounts of veteran Canadian marathon swimmer, George Park caught my eye.<\/p>\n

A competitor in the 1954 Commonwealth Games and the 1955 Pan-American Games (he had to skip the 1952 Olympics after passing out due to illness in a qualifying heat), Mr. Park earned the nickname, \u201cthe Sea Wolf\u201d in a twenty-eight mile race he won in 1964.\u00a0 If anyone knew what they were talking about, surely it was the Sea Wolf.<\/p>\n

During a thirty hour marathon swim in Montreal, Mr. Park\u2019s partner \u2013 himself a champion from Florida \u2013 was unable to continue due to the cold water.\u00a0 The Sea Wolf continued the race without relief relying on a mixture of chocolate, glucose powder, tang and chicken.\u00a0 Surprisingly, this concoction left Mr. Park, in his words, \u201cnot feeling too well.\u201d\u00a0 Taking a well earned break, he happened to run into, \u201cPepi\u201d, a friend and pizza parlor proprietor, on his way to a delivery.\u00a0 When he learned that Mr. Park was hurting, Pepi offered him the pizza he was delivering.\u00a0 He devoured the pizza and headed back into the water feeling, \u201clike superman.\u201d\u00a0 Mr. Park never swam better.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t have any pizza \u2013 or even chicken and tang \u2013 on hand, so I would have to make do with a salami sandwich.\u00a0 Somehow, I thought the Sea Wolf would approve.<\/p>\n

My stomach suitably filled, it was time to head to the start line at the still-under-construction Ritz Carlton.\u00a0 I was perfectly willing to walk what was probably three quarters of a mile along the beach, but my father-in-law wouldn\u2019t hear of it.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want me to tire myself out needlessly before the race even started, and besides he was going to the store anyway; he would drive.\u00a0 Owing to its lack of roads, the traffic on Grand Cayman is surprisingly bad at times.\u00a0 This was one of those times.\u00a0 After crawling for nearly ten minutes, we had moved about 250 yards.\u00a0 We agreed that I\u2019d make better time on foot.\u00a0 My ever generous father-in-law promised a cold beer at the finish line, and, thanking him, I bailed out of the van and scampered across the blacktop to the other side of the busy road.\u00a0 Strolling down the beach in my tight Speedo was not something I had been relishing, but now that I was running down the highway in exactly that \u2013 the blacktop burning my bare feet \u2013 the beach sounded good.\u00a0 Twirling my goggles nervously on my finger like a seven year old boy, I cut through a parking lot hopping on tip toe, then gingerly made my way through a construction site \u2013 more post-hurricane rebuilding \u2013 and was finally back on sand.<\/p>\n

The start area in front of the emergent luxury of the Ritz was teeming with swimmers of every age.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much of an air of competition about it.\u00a0 It seemed like a holiday picnic that no one had bothered to get dressed for.\u00a0 Whole families talked about who would be swimming with whom, and instructed younger members to stay with so-and-so.\u00a0 Gatorade and brightly colored swim caps were handed out and all were called to attention for the safety instructions.\u00a0 We were to keep our fluorescent swim caps on at all times.\u00a0 If we needed assistance (i.e. we were drowning), we were to flail our arms and a race marshal in a kayak or coastguard boat would come to help.\u00a0 This seemed an appropriate signal.\u00a0 It was okay to stop and rest on the beach if you needed to, but if you decided to drop out, you had to find a race marshal and report your number.\u00a0 The previous year a full scale search had been mounted for a kid who was actually at home playing Nintendo.\u00a0 There was a blessing and prayer that all the swimmers would be safe, and recognition that, despite the devastation of the hurricane and the number of people who had left the island over the past year, there were still nearly 400 hundred people competing this year.\u00a0 Finally, we were counted as we filed into the water.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to avoid the crowd, I swam out about 75 yards, and awaited the start, treading water and fiddling with my goggles.\u00a0 I met a guy from Virginia who had lived on the island for about five years and worked for a swimming pool company.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re doing this on your vacation?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I saw the ad on TV, and it sounded fun somehow.\u00a0 My family thinks I\u2019m crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fun. I bet there\u2019s nothing quite like this in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

I believed him.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re staying just up the beach, so if I get tired I can just get out, and I\u2019m home.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed at my very first distance swimming joke.<\/p>\n

Before I was ready, the air horn sounded announcing the start of the race, and I snapped my goggles into place and thrust myself forward. Suddenly, there was much less room in the water.\u00a0 You can simulate this by finding four hundred people, standing them up tightly behind a rope, and then having them all lie down at once. The tranquil sea was turned into a frenzy of churning whitewater and thrashing limbs.\u00a0 Something about it made me think of sharks.<\/p>\n

There was no reason to; I hadn\u2019t seen any sharks during my stay or even heard of any, but there was a dive site in my guidebook called \u201cHammerhead Hole,\u201d and a bar in town called \u201cHammerhead\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 Even without these clues though, I would still be thinking about sharks.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of a conditioned consciousness that comes with swimming in the ocean \u2013 you don\u2019t think you\u2019ll actually run into one, but you know they\u2019re out there, like drunk drivers at closing time.<\/p>\n

The Sea Wolf had experience with sharks.\u00a0 In a fourteen mile race off of Rhode Island billed as the world\u2019s greatest marathon, Mr. Park was warned by a sign hung from the escort boat that read: \u201cDon\u2019t panic, there is a shark 200 yards behind you. Don\u2019t stop or change your pace.\u201d\u00a0 To ease his worry, they later added another sign informing him that the coast guard was tracking it, and would shoot if it attacked him \u2013 no doubt a comfort.\u00a0 The Sea Wolf claims the shark was fourteen feet long and that it followed him for the next ten miles, during which he did not stop or change his pace \u2013 even, apparently, for tang and, or chicken.<\/p>\n

So that was it, for motivation I would imagine there was a shark following me.\u00a0 In hindsight, this was not such a good idea.\u00a0 Anyone familiar with long-distance (or at least long-time) endurance sports knows about endorphins released during physical activity causing what is referred to as a \u201crunner\u2019s high.\u201d\u00a0 Though I wouldn\u2019t call it a \u201chigh,\u201d for me, swimming at times provided something like this.\u00a0 Not only were you working your ass off, but you were doing it in a strange environment, somewhat inhospitable to human life, that could double as a sensory deprivation tank.\u00a0 At its best, swimming could put me into a trance-like reverie of seemingly unrelated, but tenuously connected thoughts, images and memories \u2013 like the sleep between snooze alarms \u2013 during which I would propel myself forward almost unaware of my efforts.\u00a0 At its worst, it was like climbing through setting concrete.<\/p>\n

I was closer to the concrete end of the experience spectrum at the moment.\u00a0 Wending my way through the tangle of arms and legs, surging and stalling to pass or avoid running into my fellow swimmers, the race was as relaxing as I imagined driving an ambulance through rush hour traffic might be. The imaginary shark in my slipstream added absolutely nothing to the experience. Trying to get through the throng, I felt I had started out faster than usual, and I tried to concentrate on taking deep, even breaths when I wasn\u2019t inhaling water or someone\u2019s heel.<\/p>\n

Gradually, I carved out space for myself and the bodies around me began to fade, the deep blue of the ocean filtering out the bright colors of swimsuits and pastiness of flesh alike.\u00a0 My lungs burned and my arms felt like rubber, but I concentrated on stretching out my stroke and taking in air, until, eventually my arms took on a life divorced from my own, pulling through the water and reaching back up out of it like the slow paddlewheel of a steamboat.\u00a0 I rode along, kicking when I remembered to.<\/p>\n

I caught a flash of vivid blue off to my right. It wasn\u2019t a shark, but a lone blue tang gliding along beside and beneath me (my father in law had pointed one out and told me its name during one of our snorkeling trips).\u00a0 About the size and the shape of a medium basket of fish and chips, it was keeping pace with me, or rather I with it, though it looked to be expending far less energy.\u00a0 I decided this was a good omen, and that I would keep up with the fish as long as I could.<\/p>\n

As a child in the 70\u2019s, I became, for a time, obsessed with the television specials of Jacques Cousteau.\u00a0 I would sit wobbling on a stack of pillows in front of the set watching undulating sea fans and coral, and not speak to anyone, as this detracted from my underwater experience.\u00a0 At some point I became interested and then fixated on the apparatus the \u201cfrogmen\u201d \u2013 as my grandfather called them \u2013 used to breathe.\u00a0 Fascination eventually gave way to terror at the idea of a limited amount of air in those silver cylinders.\u00a0 I felt better when I saw them go down with two, but still not comfortable.\u00a0 Gradually I began to be aware of my own breathing; it became a conscious task that I was afraid I might forget to do. Rather than wonder, the shows began to produce in me a claustrophobic sense of panic.\u00a0 But still I watched.<\/p>\n

Despite a fear of SCUBA equipment, and ear infections that kept me out of the pool for long, hot summers as a youngster, I eventually developed into a fairly good swimmer.\u00a0 As a high school freshman, the 500 yard freestyle became something of a signature event of mine.\u00a0 It was the longest, most grueling race in high school swimming, and it wasn\u2019t that I was good at it, just that I was the kind of kid who didn\u2019t realize you could say no to something suggested by an adult.\u00a0 No other race used lap counting cards to remind the competitors where they were.<\/p>\n

In the early days of SCUBA diving, before Jacques Cousteau and his friends really figured out how things worked, they sometimes ran into something they called, \u201cthe rapture of the deep,\u201d or, \u201cnitrogen narcosis,\u201d where a diver might forget what they were doing, which way was up, or even that they might eventually need to go up.\u00a0 It had something to do with breathing nitrogen under pressure.<\/p>\n

The 500 took place in water that typically ranged from three and a half to five and a half feet deep, so there was no danger of rapture of the deep.\u00a0 Still, there was a sort of rapture of monotony that would set in.\u00a0 Lane counters rocked or shook the number cards underwater near the end of the race as a signal to pour on whatever you had left or at least to break out of your trance.\u00a0 Typically, at that point in the race, I was no longer entirely in the pool, but instead off on another planet thinking about homework I hadn\u2019t done, tests I hadn\u2019t studied for, and girls I hadn\u2019t had sex with \u2013 this last category encompassing an extremely large group.<\/p>\n

In a way, it was a lot like my algebra\/trigonometry class.\u00a0 I had decided that past basic adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing \u2013 or at least knowing how to use these functions on a calculator \u2013 mathematics was a field of knowledge I could get by without.\u00a0 And it turns out I was right.\u00a0 My teacher, Mr. Krause, and I had an unspoken agreement: I would not bother him and he would pass me with a \u201cD.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Krause was a nuclear physicist who was laid-off when the state stopped building nuclear power plants in the 1970s.\u00a0 Through some strange confluence of forces that I didn\u2019t understand, but undoubtedly factored in summers off, he decided that if he couldn\u2019t be a nuclear physicist anymore, the next best way for him to contribute to society was to sit in front of a room full of teenagers and mumble to himself while writing equations on an overhead projector.<\/p>\n

Our class was divided into uneven thirds.\u00a0 In the front of the room were the few kids who actually got it. They watched what Mr. Krause wrote on the overhead eagerly and checked it against their own papers, nodding emphatically at the correspondence.\u00a0 In the middle were the kids who didn\u2019t get it, but hadn\u2019t yet given up, and thought diligence might help.\u00a0 Finally, the largest third took up most of the back half of the room, and consisted of the kids, myself included, who didn\u2019t get it and no longer cared.\u00a0 In a way, Mr. Krause wasn\u2019t so unlike us.<\/p>\n

Not all of the kids in the back were parties to the agreement, though.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t going to get the \u201cD\u201d; they were going to fail.\u00a0 I wondered what would happen to them; how would their lives turn out?\u00a0 It seemed to me that an \u201cF\u201d on your report card was surely the first step on a path that lead eventually and inexorably to a career in a muffler shop, crime, and then prison.\u00a0 But no one else seemed concerned.<\/p>\n

Erika, who was clinging to the last row of the middle group \u2013 those who still cared and thought they could figure it out \u2013 leaned forward over her desk to compare her notes to the person sitting in front of her.\u00a0 Behind her, solidly in the back third of the room, sat Steve McSorley, a kid I\u2019d known since fourth grade when my family moved into a house down the street from his.\u00a0 At some point early in our fourth grade year, Steve had begun to think about sex, and had never stopped.\u00a0 Erika bent over the desk in front of him was predictably irresistible.\u00a0 He stood up in his own desk and reached forward pretending to hold onto her waist and then began pumping his hips, simulating intercourse.\u00a0 The pinched expression on his face broke to a maniac grin, as he let one hand float up above his head like a bull rider.<\/p>\n

Our third of the class erupted into fits of laughter as Steve thrust faster into the air above his desk.\u00a0 I laughed and shook my head wondering about my friend, and unconsciously believing that asses would always be as perfect as Erika\u2019s.\u00a0 Soon the disruption, if not the laughter, had spread to the rest of the class, infecting even those who were genuinely still trying to master trigonometry, undoubtedly in the interest of someday building bridges or causeways that would improve all our lives.\u00a0 Only Mr. Krause soldiered on, paying no attention to the chaos growing around him, mumbling and scribbling numbers on the transparent overhead sheets as if he was in a different classroom somewhere far away full of graduate students.<\/p>\n

At a time later in the same hour, but when the class had once again been so subdued by the hypnotic, monotone mumblings of Mr. Krause as to seem like a different day, our collective trance was broken again by the crackle of the intercom speaker. It was our principal, Archie MacAllister.\u00a0 He was a big, barrel-chested man with giant, meaty hands, a fleshy neck and silver crew-cut that never seemed to grow.\u00a0 It was impossible for me to tell how old he was, but he seemed to belong to another era \u2013 an era long before salads came in bags, in which men killed chickens before dinner, went off to war like it was college, and didn\u2019t have a different pair of shoes for everything they did.<\/p>\n

Just the week before, he had addressed the student body about what was apparently an epidemic of uninvited groping in the halls.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t realized there was a problem, and wondered if it truly was an epidemic why I wasn\u2019t a part of it.\u00a0 Archie assured us that he knew what it was like to be a teenager, and that once in high school he had \u201ctouched something that didn\u2019t belong to me.\u201d\u00a0 I wondered what it was like when he was in high school, and imagined him racing a supped-up jalopy on a straight stretch of deserted highway that seemed always to exist outside of town in the movies.\u00a0 \u201cHer name was Margot Johnson, and she was one of those big Scandahoovian girls.\u201d\u00a0 I had never heard the term \u201cScandahoovian\u201d before \u2013 and haven\u2019t since \u2013 and had no idea what it meant.\u00a0 \u201cShe turned around and slapped me so hard I fell on the floor.\u00a0 And I deserved it.\u201d\u00a0 It was unclear whether he was advocating violence against the gropers, but he did say that people \u201cshould keep their hands to themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first it seemed like it would be the same type of announcement \u2013 and as ass-grabbing was about as likely to stop as smoking pot in the parking lot, no one really bothered to stop whatever they were doing to listen \u2013 but as Archie began to speak, there was something new in his voice.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t sound nostalgic this time; he wasn\u2019t recalling glory days and Margot Johnson.\u00a0 He sounded tired and a little sad.<\/p>\n

“People,\u201d \u2013 he always started with \u201cpeople\u201d as if unsure how to refer to us, deciding to go with the most general category he could think of \u2013 \u201cI need to talk to you today about something that has come to my attention which disturbs me a great deal.\u201d\u00a0 The tinny acoustics of the small wall speaker and something about the way he spoke made him sound like a radio broadcast warning of the threat to our way of life from \u201cRed China.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cPeople, it has come to my attention that some individual has been . . .\u201d He paused a moment as if to gather himself. \u201cSomeone has been defecating in the drinking fountains of this school.\u201d\u00a0 There was an excited mumbling in the room as people checked and confirmed that yes, defecating did mean \u201cshitting.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cPeople, this is unacceptable. It poses a health risk to all of us and it is simply wrong!\u201d\u00a0 His voice sounded thinner than usual, as if he were addressing the microphone from across his office.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not just wrong,\u201d he continued, straining. \u201cIt\u2019s sick!\u00a0 And the individual who is doing this to our school is sick!\u201d\u00a0 He was back in front of the microphone.\u00a0 In fact, it sounded like his lips were brushing up against it.\u00a0 \u201cI want you to know,\u201d he was yelling now, screaming, starting to lose it; you could almost hear the veins on his thick neck bulging under his crisp, white collar.\u00a0 \u201cI want you to know that when I catch you \u2013 you phantom crapper \u2013 you\u2019re going to wish you\u2019d never set foot in this school!\u00a0 You\u2019re going to wish you\u2019d never lived, you goddamned sick son of a bitch!\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it was silent, like all of the air had been sucked out of the classroom.\u00a0 All around the room we looked at each other as if we might float out of our seats and into the vacuum of space.\u00a0 A panting, almost wheezing, sound came from the intercom speaker, and I think that Archie eventually continued, but it was too late.\u00a0 You could no longer hear what he was saying.\u00a0 The air rushed back into our class and our lungs with a giant whoosh, and the entire student body, assembled in classrooms across the campus, let out a collective, \u201cBwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!\u201d followed by shrieks of, \u201cphantom crapper!\u201d and uncontrolled laughter.\u00a0 Even Mr. Krause could not shut out the riot engulfing him.\u00a0 The kids who were still in their desks were turned around talking to other kids, the rest were up, capering in the aisles looking for something to hurl out of the windows.\u00a0 The inmates had taken over the asylum.\u00a0 If there had been a drinking fountain in the room, there would have been a line to defecate in it.\u00a0 Our principal had broken down, and we thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world.<\/p>\n

An absence of color brings me back to what I\u2019m doing \u2013 churning the water one arm at a time, tilting my head to the side as my right shoulder passes my mouth, taking wet, gasping breaths, and periodically remembering to kick.\u00a0 I can no longer make out my family \u2013 the waves are too big, and the blue tang has disappeared.\u00a0 I\u2019m flying over an empty desert of sand.\u00a0 I wonder what happened to the fish.<\/p>\n

I wonder what happened to the “Phantom Crapper.”\u00a0 How does a guy who\u2019s shitting in the drinking fountains in high school turn out?\u00a0 What does he go on to do?\u00a0 How do any of us turn out?\u00a0 When do we turn out?\u00a0 Aside from seeing who is fat, bald or still cute, these are the reasons people go to their high school reunions, and it\u2019s why I recently went to mine.<\/p>\n

I asked my mother-in-law, who was visiting us in Seattle at the time, to iron my brown, sort-of-shiny shirt, busted out the blue corduroy blazer I bought in Buenos Aires, and did my best to arrange my hair, all pretty much out of curiosity.\u00a0 Parking a mile away in order to save three dollars on parking, I arrived at the baseball stadium banquet room dangerously close to breaking a sweat.\u00a0 After the danger of perspiration had passed, I went in and was immediately confronted with a barrage of strangely familiar faces that I could not instantly match with names.\u00a0 This brought about a mild sense of panic, which in turn brought about the sweating I\u2019d been working to avoid.\u00a0 Thankfully, I ran into my friends, Mike and Gaje, who, instead of not seeing for twenty years, I see pretty much every weekend.\u00a0 I was so flustered, I couldn\u2019t remember their names right away either, but \u201cdude\u201d and a nod is sufficient between us.<\/p>\n

Once I had chatted a few minutes and regained what I pass off as composure, I was ready to face my former mates.\u00a0 Mike and I almost immediately ran into Lucy, one of the best looking girls in our class.\u00a0 She continued to be great looking, and I was surprised she was talking to me, as I don\u2019t recall her ever doing it in high school.\u00a0 It sort of made me feel good \u2013 maybe I was cooler than I remembered.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike, you look great, you haven\u2019t changed a bit,\u201d she gushed.\u00a0 Mike beamed, and I looked sidelong at him thinking about disagreeing with her.\u00a0 \u201cPat, what happened to all your blonde hair?\u201d\u00a0 I smiled and nodded like an idiot, feeling my face change to a deeper shade of red, and remembered what a bitch I thought she was.\u00a0 From there it was sort of a blur of trips to the bar and reconnecting with old friends \u2013 friends I\u2019d forgotten I ever had, and couldn\u2019t believe I hadn\u2019t talked to every day for the past twenty years.\u00a0 They were Microsoft millionaires, Air Force fighter pilots, and Montana fly-fishing guides, but mostly they were just old friends.\u00a0 Erika was a fitness guru, and lived somewhere in the Arizona desert.\u00a0 Steve McSorley was there; he was just fine, and I still loved the guy.<\/p>\n

Later, I found myself talking to Danielle, another of the prettiest girls in our class \u2013 she was still pretty, not a bitch and never was \u2013 though she did once tell a friend that I was cute, so it was too bad I was such a nerd.\u00a0 A guy named Jerry, whose last name I still can\u2019t remember, managed to awkwardly join our conversation.\u00a0 If I was something of a nerd, and I don\u2019t deny it, I at least had a visa that allowed me to visit the land of the cool kids.\u00a0 This was not the case for Jerry.\u00a0 In the hierarchy of nerdiness, Jerry was a superhero compared to me.\u00a0 This guy had math club, rocket club, and<\/em> Dungeons and Dragons club credentials.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying that I didn\u2019t roll a few twenty-sided die in my day, but I had relegated that fact to a shameful secret by high school.<\/p>\n

Danielle was silent, staring at Jerry, as I single-handedly ran through the questions politeness dictates.\u00a0 It turned out he does something that I completely don\u2019t understand, but has to do with the 911 system for the city of Renton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to work with electronics and all kinds of cool toys. You know, basically living every guy\u2019s dream.\u201d He said this with so much pride that I believed him.\u00a0 Maybe he was. I didn\u2019t know the guy, I barely remembered his face, but I was glad for him, and I was proud of him.\u00a0 He was doing it, whatever the hell it was.<\/p>\n

My impulse to shake his hand, or hug him, or give him an oversized high five, was distracted by Danielle\u2019s soft, sweet voice addressing him: \u201cYou know this is really weird, but I have absolutely no recollection of you.\u00a0 I think maybe we never hung out, which is weird since we were in the same class . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t trying to be mean; I\u2019m pretty sure she was serious.\u00a0 She actually thought it was weird that she, possibly the most gorgeous girl in my school, never hung out with Jerry from the rocketry club.\u00a0 That\u2019s what was so beautiful and terrible about her \u2013 she wasn\u2019t trying to, but she was, nonetheless, crushing the dream. Jerry, had finally achieved it, he was living it, and had come here tonight to shout it out, and Danielle, beautiful Danielle, was unconsciously, unintentionally, and relentlessly \u2013 like a force of nature \u2013 dismantling it.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t blame him if he\u2019d turned, and crapped in the nearest drinking fountain.\u00a0 Instead, he stood and smiled, nodding, undaunted, a resilience no doubt born of hundreds of hours of role-playing games in massive multiplayer online universes that I\u2019ll never know exist.<\/p>\n

What is every guy\u2019s dream?\u00a0 How do you know when you\u2019re living it?\u00a0 I\u2019m floating in the wine blue Caribbean (yeah, I stole that from Homer, and the Aegean) as far away from land as I\u2019ve ever been without a boat.\u00a0 In the fading distance, on a tiny island of sand and scrub covered with luxury condominiums, is my beautiful wife and her beautiful family.\u00a0 They have invited me in, and they treat me like their own.\u00a0 They care about me and care for me.\u00a0 My wife is smart, funny and accomplished, and, not only did she decide to talk to me one day, she decided she loved me and to marry me.\u00a0 I am lucky beyond words.<\/p>\n

For this to be my dream, I would have to have dreamed it, right? \u2013 probably while not paying attention in Algebra class \u2013 but I don\u2019t remember any of it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what I dreamed.\u00a0 They should tell you that: right after \u201cbe careful what you wish for,\u201d they should tell you, \u201cremember what you dream.\u201d\u00a0 As far as dreams go, this is a good one.\u00a0 I\u2019d say it\u2019s even better than working with electronics for City of Renton, but it doesn\u2019t feel familiar.\u00a0 Should I be worried?<\/p>\n

They are standing on land waving to me. They have towels and cold beer, but I am still swimming, and I don\u2019t know if I can stop. I feel like Seymour Glass \u2013 what are bananafish anyway, and what the hell was that all about?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how I\u2019m going to turn out \u2013 I can\u2019t remember who I was going to be.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t happen soon, will it be too late?\u00a0 Swimming this course, I will end up in Cuba, cutting sugar cane and drinking rum with Che Guevara and Fidel.\u00a0 But Che is long dead, and I would hack my shins to bits swinging a machete.<\/p>\n

A string of orange, inflatable buoys is gently, almost imperceptibly, funneling me toward the finish line and the safety of the shore.\u00a0 Swimmers, who managed to disperse into their own isolated spaces of ocean, have begun to converge once again in a thrashing of limbs, and I become aware of people around me for the first time in what seems a very long time.\u00a0 I am being drawn back toward land, where I will emerge from the sea crawling, stand up, and walk, wobbling at first.\u00a0 I will gratefully take the cold beer from my father-in-law, and do my best to keep becoming.\u00a0 Even if I\u2019m not living every guy\u2019s dream, I am comforted by the thought that, surely it must be someone\u2019s \u2013 maybe even mine.<\/p>\n

If you would like learn more about George Park, please visit swimmingdownhill.com.\u00a0 All information about, and quotations of Mr. Park are taken from swimmingdownhill.com, and I assume no responsibility for their authenticity or veracity.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…you don\u2019t think you\u2019ll actually run into a shark…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}