Happy? Tag! You're it.

Like most of the folks that have been attending the YMCA water class for several years, Louise never imagined that she would still be a regular three years later. What was it that moved her to show up every morning? Was it the fact that she had become the teacher’s pet? Perhaps it was the camaraderie? Maybe it was the handsome lifeguards? Was it something else? Could it be as simple as the glide? “We deserved this. We deserved this. We deserved this. We deserved this.” Louise chanted as she floated on her belly holding her water weights with ease on top of the water. She passed us going the opposite direction with her arms and legs out stretched relaxed. She was doing what our instructor calls, “The Glide.” Louise’s voice was deep and sounded relieved like someone sounds after they have just woken up or were in the throws of an endorphin rush. “Endorphins are released during long, continuous workouts, when the level of intensity is between moderate and high, and breathing is...

She mouthed the words, "Oh my God!” Earlier in the ladies locker room the Brit, Dorothy stood in her black rubber water shoes and her conservative multi-colored one piece bathing suit. “I have this visor but I just hate the way it feels on my head. I’m not sure why I need it exactly?” Raising from the bench another woman moved next to Dorothy and looked at their aging reflections in the mirror. “Wear it. It will keep the sun off your fore head. You will thank me later.” In the pool surrounded by deep water and suffocated by a floatation belt, the added pressure of the black visor on Dorothy’s head was unbearable. Sloshing to the edge she took off the visor and left it there. An hour later bare chested, ripped, tan, life guards were in the pool moving the lane lines. Dorothy smiled to herself, “What a delightful treat.” She felt good all over. She even forgot for a moment about the tighter than tight blue Styrofoam waist belt and the shouts from her instructor, “Hold ...

What if the what ifs come true when we focus on the what ifs we don't want? What we think of most will be. A boy believed he would not pass math and then he would have to go to summer school. He believed that he would most likely flunk middle school and not make it to high school. He did not flunk math. He was told by the school counselor that he passed all his classes. He was told to celebrate. He did not. Disbelief was in his eyes. The last day of school he skipped and did not take a final exam. Because he chose to skip, the school would not allow him to take the exam and they did not pass him. Self fulfilling failure. Yes! What power! "A" students have the same power. They believe and they get what they believe. Indeed, the optimist is right and the pessimist is right.

Yesterday, driving back from the Miami Airport with my in-laws, my Father-in-Law, aka Mother Teresa in pants looked at the phone my husband had just picked up to receive a business call and asked, “Is that a blueberry?” I couldn’t make eye contact with him when I answered, “It’s an IPhone.” Smiling I thought to myself, he’s just so adorable-blueberry, blackberry he was close. Today in the local pool one of my favorite older ladies who’s husband just passed away watched as one of the swim coaches walked by with a large gray rectangle shaped box and asked, “Why does she bring that heater to the pool?’ Again, I found myself smiling. I thought, it does look like a heater; but, it’s a time clock. One of the other ladies in our water class filled her in. Then there is my Mom. She can not say the word “Fajita” to save her soul. She’ll proudly say, “Let’s have Fra -Gee-Ta’s!” We’ve corrected her so many times now that we’ve given up. We just let her say it her way. We call it a Dori-i...

When Judy Garland sang, “Somewhere over the rainbow” I wonder if the pilots on the shuttle Atlantis were inspired when they were young by the lyrics, “Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow. Why, oh why can’t I?” Twelve days ago, Atlantis and six astronauts took off for one last mission and I missed it. When we heard the loud boom and then a softer boom, in the pool this morning at 8:48 none of us recognized the sound of Atlantis reentering the atmosphere. In retrospect, it did sound like a sonic boom. Seeing as we are at war and our current culture is on guard for terrorist attacks, one person said, “I hope I don’t see a mushroom cloud.” Another said, “Don’t even joke about that sort of thing.” I felt a cold chill run through my body. The lifeguard said, "My chair shook!" Then, someone said, “It must have been an explosion from a plant in Ft. Lauderdale .” Then we feared for the lives of those people. The pool was quiet. We stopped movi...

We are shaped by our careers. Each and every one of us is. I never realized how true that statement was until this morning in class with my swim mates. One of the gray haired ladies was making her way from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end where Amy and I were pumping water weights and peddling our heavy water shoes in reverse with out touching the bottom. Wading toward us she questioned, “I can't do this. How are you two doing with this one?” Our voices bounced from the water to the incoming older woman’s ears. “Great!” We shouted sounding like an old “Tony the Tiger” commercial. The woman sloshed back to her side of the pool picked her feet off the bottom, struggling peddling and pumping the heavy water. Amy, my swim mate turned toward me and quietly out of the side of her mouth she confessed, “I wasn’t going to tell her that this was killing my hamstrings and that my biceps are totally shot.” No shit I proclaimed, we’re in sales!

One of the female YMCA members brought breakfast wrapped in foil, every morning for one of the male lifeguards and swooned over him. This behavior went on for days and finally, I looked at the guy in the pool next to me and whispered, “Why does she do that?” “She’s trying to recruit Hunt as her future son in law.” He laughed. I’ll admit, on the surface, he would make a good son in law, tall, handsome, out going, nice, and respectful; but, there is no way I would bring him breakfast every morning and gush over him. It’s just strange. Today when we filed into the pool at 7 AM and said our hellos to the young college age Hunt perched six feet up in his life guard chair, none of us imagined what was coming next. The gate to the pool flew open crashing metal on metal and Lala the Hispanic want to be future mother-in-law thundered toward Hunt hotter than flaming hell salsa on a chetto chip. Like a freight train on a track she was unstoppable. She halted at the base of Hunts chair, th...