So I have to admit I was a bit confused on this one. Upon some consultation with Maia we decided it was a photo of something that you enjoyed doing or something you liked while in school. So...I think the answer is obvious...SWIMMING! I flipped back through some old photos and found this very spectacular one of me when I was about 10 or 11 I think...
Yep, that is in fact pretty awesome. That is my very first swimming relay team - Samantha, Courtney, Andrea, and me. All of us looking pretty excited about life in general really. And with this picture (as all good pictures) comes a story. Notice that my goggles are the only colored ones. If you could see this picture up close you would also see that my goggles are the only ones that have an slant to the lens. And there is a very good reason for this...I was terrified of my goggles coming off when I dove in the water. DEATHLY TERRIFIED. I'm talking to the point that while I loved, loved, loved, swimming, I seriously contemplated (with my dad as my sounding board, because that's what good dad's do) how maybe I should just not dive at the start because there was obviously no way in the world I would be able to continue my race if my goggles fell off. Yes, I realize this is absurd. Swimmer's goggles fall off all the time, heck, Michael Phelps lost his goggles in one of his gold medal swims at the Olympics (and obviously didn't just finish but won...the Olympics). Clearly it shouldn't have been that big of a deal. But, clearly, to me, it was.
And so at some point along the way my wonderful, intelligent dad devised a very wonderful, intelligent plan. He took me to pick out a pair of new goggles. Goggles that would certainly stay on my head no matter what and were designed - yes, specifically designed - to stay on my head when I dove in. That was the purpose of the slant on the lens he said. Obviously, it made sense. And obviously from that point forward I never worried about my goggles because my dad said they wouldn't fall off...and they never fell off. Once I was older I could see the brilliance in my dad's plan. I highly doubt those goggles were DESIGNED to not fall off your head when you dove in. But, it was a pretty easy case to make considering the whole force of water, and such, being less on an angled surface. And when I stopped concentrating on my goggles ALL the time I ended up being pretty decent at swimming. And once I became good at swimming I realized that really you could in fact swim a race EVEN if you goggles fell off.
In the end, goggles, like many other pieces of sports equipment became one of those things that become part of you. As a swimmer, you have them on so often that you begin to bond with them, and when they break you go to all sorts of elaborate schemes to make them work or find just the right ones to replace them. I eventually released the slant ones, and had a specific pair of super tight silicone ones that I raced with and a different pair of foam and plastic ones that I practiced with, then I eventually got into sweedish goggles, but never would race in them because as much as I wanted to rationally say it didn't matter, there were only specific goggles I would ever race in (yes, because of the falling off thing). And yes, I did swim a race one time with my goggles filling up with water the whole time and lived to tell about it.
But yet, the importance of the right goggles continued until the last race I ever swam...and really even now when I just go in to swim laps in the pool. As I was flipping through pics to find the one for this post, though, I found one of my favorite goggle pictures of all time. It was after swimming Championships my junior year of college. That was possibly my favorite year of college and those were some of my favorite goggles (with tape across the nose piece because the plastic always cut into my nose and yet I love them so). Some things don't change, girls with goggles finding life entertaining :)
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