Observations from “The Aquatic Center.”
I was watching my daughter’s swim practice this afternoon at one of our “fancy” fitness gyms and swimming centers. I swim across the street where the price is cheaper.
It was interesting to note ONCE AGAIN, from my keen empirical research, that the guys wearing “jammers” were much slower than the ones wearing the speedo swimming briefs. I clocked them. Some of you slower swimmers just go ahead and bite the bullet and go “Skimpy.” I swear I have the numbers behind this. It can’t hurt. As a general rule, guys who wear the skimpy suits stomp the living daylights out of the “jammer” wearers.
Here’s the deal, though. The “Jammer” guys also look afraid and ashamed and mortified to even walk out and swim in the “jammers,” in the way in which they held their towels and what not. They want to be clothed for some reason. This may be a “southern” thing. I’m not sure.
If they got caught in a pinch, they’d probably just as well wear those long, baggy Bannana Republic trunks, if they didn’t weigh them down 40 pounds in the water. So, right off the bat, they’ve got this nagging psychological hang up about being out there, bare to the world, too much for them, even in a “jammer.” God forbid anyone from his work or a female friend were to swoop out to the pool from the aerobics class and catch him in his “jammers.”
What are they hiding?
Is it a moral Victorian, prudish thing? Possibly.
But some “Jammers” wear “jammers” because, okay, let’s get this over with, they have overlapping gut flaps, that a skimpy suit would just morbidly expose. Or, maybe they have “size issues.”
All in all, all strikes against you.
A true, veteran swimmer is generally sheen-like, polished, and wired to go like a shaved terrier dog, he will walk un-strutfully out to the deck in his skimpy speedo, without giving a thought in the world that he is wearing barely nothing, exposed to the world. He waits for the clock and goes. He was probably a “Jammer” wearer at one time, but no longer. He has lost his innocence. Everything must be peeled off and skimped for speed. If a friend catches him in his “skimps,” well screw it, so what? “Hey, what’s going on?” “How are you doing?” “I’ve got to get these lasps in?”
But there’s another being out there, I hate to report. He was waiting on a lane. He’s the lowest on the food chain.
This was the triathlete swimmer guy in the Desoto Unisex shorts, with the big bag full of Zoomer fins, and Aqua Vision Ironman goggles. Slow as shit. But tricked out, with everything from tri-zone.com or triathlete magazine. He just reeked “I do triathlons.” Have you seen these guys?. I was watching that guy more than anybody else, because that was me several years ago. I wish somebody would have told me how stupid that looked. He was sort of agitated about “waiting on a lane,” and I wanted to walk over there and tell him, “you ain’t shit, and your nickname ain’t even doo-doo.” A good triathlete blends into each sport in his community with the best ones, wearing what swimmers swim in, or what bikers bike in, or what runners run in. You can’t tell him from the skimpy speedo swimmers when he swims, and you can’t tell him different from the good runners, when he’s running, and so on.
He’s incognito.
