[Yasa]

I can swim. I'm not a swimmer. I learned this when I was being certified for SCUBA. In order to begin the course (which is pretty much a certification-mill, lets be honest) we had to swim 20 lengths in their pool. I don't know what that works out to in distance, but on the "holy #### I'm tired" scale, I sat at a 10. I made the mistake of thinking it was a race. I'm not sure why. I haven't won a competition since I played U9 soccer, and even then I was kicked off the field because apparently it's "appalling" for a 25 year old to practice gladiator-style fighting against a bunch of 8 year olds. I bet 100% of the people there have asked themselves "how many kids can I fight before I get overwhelmed?," so I get punished for actually testing it out.

Anyway.

The first 5 laps were great. I was ahead of a French Canadian guy named Yann. I was in first place. First place for a non-existant, non-competition against people that didn't care. But I cared. I wanted to - needed to win. This was my time to show the world what I made of. My German instructor would be so proud of me. Every time he glanced above his People's Magazine, roughly once every 10 minutes, I just knew he was swelling with pride. These last 15 laps are for you, Dirk.

It was at lap 6 that I realized that a combination diet of cigarettes, Chang Beer, noodles + whatever bottom crawling sea-bugs and chili peppers probably wasn't the greatest for even a normal human being, let alone one that had to attempt any physical activity. My body was giving up. 14 laps to go.

6-15, what torture! All of my muscles were cramping, and screaming. This was a full on civil war between body systems. My legs were trying to seperate themselves from my torso. They had enough of this ego-driven horse####, which meant kicking frivolously. My arms decided to go into stand-by. Lungs? They checked out 3 laps ago. But my stomach. What a spiteful prick, the stomach.

Lap 16. Here it comes. I'm in dead-last by this point. It's not a competition any more. It never was, but now I had actually realized it. My front crawl wilted into a sad, uncoordinated water seizure with enough forward movement to technically keep me going. Not even a doggy paddle. A dog would be depressed by what it saw. I can't stop though. If I stop, I'm disqualified from training. My stomach knew this though and had begun the final stages of disruption.

I'm in the pool alone now. Everyone else has dried off and gone for lunch. Dirk was stuck waiting for me to finish. 4 more laps and I'm done. Free! Batten down the hatches, boys, there's a storm brewing in my colon and this geyser is about to go. 3 more laps and I can unleash this ICBM into a strange foreign, waterless toilet. 2 laps. No time. I can't leave, but I can't stay. Final length. I can do this! My energy is down to zero. One last consolodation of effort and I can pull this off. Just push. Oh...no. No. Nope. Nuh uh. Not today. Not any day. Why? The aqua-blue pool now divided by a line of brown, spearheaded by a crying man reaching his arm out for the edge of the pool. Gasps of "WHY?!" coming from all angles. I was done by the time I realized what had happened. A beautiful wave of relief washed over me. Relief felt a bit more viscose than I remember...

Well, to sum it all up. I'm a certified SCUBA diver. Eat my shorts, children!