Things you think about on the plane.
Jun. 27th, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
growler_southWhen I was a kid in primary school we would have, on a Wednesday afternoon, sports time. From 2 until 3pm we would be forced to play whatever ghastly team sport it was the class' turn to play, all 3 classes somewhere on the grounds at once doing something shrill. I dreaded summer sports. Winter was fine, the sporting afternoons being supplanted with craft classes: drama, cooking, woodwork, jazzercise. But summer... I would use any excuse to avoid those sports, not that I was particularly creative at that age.
The one saving grace of summer sports was pool time. One class per week got to swim in the big Para pool instead of charging aimlessly after some ball or other, and that most favored class later got to come inside, lording damp hair and smiles over the less fortunate classes. Usually the classes took it in turns, but if a class had been particularly good that week they might perhaps be bumped up the roster, or sometimes allowed to join the kids in the pool at 2:30 for an activity the teachers called 'drowning soup'.
This was all dependant on you remembering your togs if you wanted to swim. Once every 3 weeks on a Wednesday in summer, more or less. As a result there were always number of kids sitting forlornly by the pool, swim trunks in the airing cupboard back home, trying not to notice as their swimming classmates splashed them. Usually deliberately.
One particularly hot day I looked forward to the afternoon swim all day, sweating through math and reading, and at lunch time peering through the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool. Come swim time I showed an uncharacteristic burst of sportiness and was first into the changing room before I realised that, though my towel was tidily rolled in my bag, my togs were nowhere to be found.
Failure was clearly not an option, and so I quickly formulated a plan. If I wore my towel around my waist to the pool, and dropped it just as I leapt in, then the chances were that no-one would notice my lack of attire in the pool-time chaos that resulted. I would, of course, have to be first in and last out- but I usually was anyway.
It actually worked, believe it or not, with the yelling and splashing that constituted pool time nicely covering my nakedness. The problem came later. After I had carefully waited for everyone else to exit the pool, I swam over to where my towel was. Note the past tense in that sentence- someone had moved my towel. I could see it hanging on the changing shed, helpfully out of the range of being splashed, put there by Mrs Hose, our teacher. The same teacher who was now standing by the pool ladder saying "come on Grant, time to get changed."
Eight year olds are tremendous liars, but that day I plumbed the depths of my creative potential. I had to come up with something good, and immediately, or else I was going to be Nudey Rudey Grant for the rest of my school life.
"The pump took my togs, miss!" I cried. Everyone was scared of the pump intakes, with their ominous sucking noises and dreaded sticky suction. We heard that a kid drowned when his foot got stuck to the intake, and only the daring kids went anywhere near it. It seemed reasonable to me that such a dreaded device, denied its favourite meal of a fresh child, would settle for taking my togs instead.
To this day i'm not sure if she believed me or if she was just weary after a long day, but she said something along the lines of "how terrible!" and fetched my towel.
The one saving grace of summer sports was pool time. One class per week got to swim in the big Para pool instead of charging aimlessly after some ball or other, and that most favored class later got to come inside, lording damp hair and smiles over the less fortunate classes. Usually the classes took it in turns, but if a class had been particularly good that week they might perhaps be bumped up the roster, or sometimes allowed to join the kids in the pool at 2:30 for an activity the teachers called 'drowning soup'.
This was all dependant on you remembering your togs if you wanted to swim. Once every 3 weeks on a Wednesday in summer, more or less. As a result there were always number of kids sitting forlornly by the pool, swim trunks in the airing cupboard back home, trying not to notice as their swimming classmates splashed them. Usually deliberately.
One particularly hot day I looked forward to the afternoon swim all day, sweating through math and reading, and at lunch time peering through the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool. Come swim time I showed an uncharacteristic burst of sportiness and was first into the changing room before I realised that, though my towel was tidily rolled in my bag, my togs were nowhere to be found.
Failure was clearly not an option, and so I quickly formulated a plan. If I wore my towel around my waist to the pool, and dropped it just as I leapt in, then the chances were that no-one would notice my lack of attire in the pool-time chaos that resulted. I would, of course, have to be first in and last out- but I usually was anyway.
It actually worked, believe it or not, with the yelling and splashing that constituted pool time nicely covering my nakedness. The problem came later. After I had carefully waited for everyone else to exit the pool, I swam over to where my towel was. Note the past tense in that sentence- someone had moved my towel. I could see it hanging on the changing shed, helpfully out of the range of being splashed, put there by Mrs Hose, our teacher. The same teacher who was now standing by the pool ladder saying "come on Grant, time to get changed."
Eight year olds are tremendous liars, but that day I plumbed the depths of my creative potential. I had to come up with something good, and immediately, or else I was going to be Nudey Rudey Grant for the rest of my school life.
"The pump took my togs, miss!" I cried. Everyone was scared of the pump intakes, with their ominous sucking noises and dreaded sticky suction. We heard that a kid drowned when his foot got stuck to the intake, and only the daring kids went anywhere near it. It seemed reasonable to me that such a dreaded device, denied its favourite meal of a fresh child, would settle for taking my togs instead.
To this day i'm not sure if she believed me or if she was just weary after a long day, but she said something along the lines of "how terrible!" and fetched my towel.
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Date: 2009-06-27 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-28 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-28 05:19 am (UTC)And you know, of course, that many besides your husband would thoroughly enjoy the concept of Nudey Rudey Grant....
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Date: 2009-06-28 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-28 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:19 am (UTC)