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Junior year swim meet. My hair is chlorine-green and crunchy, but I don’t care. Jenny is perfect, slicing through the water below the excited-seagull noises of the spectators. My best friend waves and cheers for her. I didn’t know he was here.
100m Butterfly
30 Monday Jun 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
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This brings back so many memories for me of my amateur junior swimming career! Crunchy green hair and seagull spectators – wow – great descriptor/metaphor use! Like the parallels you have drawn with the open sea mythical mermen and maids! Great job!
Did he end up stealing your mermaid? Same thing happened to me senior year, I’m still crusty about it.
In retrospect, it may have been one of those Nice Guy moments.
uh-oh. Sadness follows after your stomach drops.
(plus I love thinking of the spectators as seagulls, that was a wonderful analogy.)
Loved the imagery you invoked and the parallels you employed between modern day and myth. Nice!
When I was participating in Junior year swim meets the only spectators really were the birds. No real people were interested. However, that was not a deterrent. We weren’t swimming for an audience – we were swimming for ourselves. Nice gargleblaster!
Yeah, in my head it was just a bunch of parents… and the best friend.
Perfect.
I love these details that take us there with you: “My hair is chlorine-green and crunchy,” “excited-seagull noises of the spectators.” I agree with Kir, the ending is a stomach-dropper.
So much to this tale. Great descriptions of the swimmers and the meet: “chlorine-green” and “excited-seagull noises of the spectators.” Plus the sudden realization at the end. Brilliant.
You elevate teen angst to an art form.
Me and DeGrassi Jr High.
True story: I was selected to be part of a focus group at my local PBS station before “DeGrassi Junior High” began to air in the US.
Wow! I think this is one of my favorites. Loved the part about the seagulls. Great job!
The chlorine-green hair that’s still crunchy….wow, that takes me back to my swim team days so vividly. And the teen angst…..you nailed it!
So much to love here — nostalgia, envy, beauty, scene, all perfectly phrased. (One of my favorite memories, although I was never a swimmer, is all those team Speedo suits — some were purple flowers, others green leaves, etc.) Great job, saroful!
I’m tempted to say… ‘Ooh burn.’ Love this.
I want to know more. 🙂 Nice job!
Uh oh. I smell trouble brewing! Perfectly real.
This feels like one of those romance movies where when the narrator sees the love of their life the sound of the film goes all murky. Like it went underwater. . . Oh! I see what you did there!
I’m a sucker for teen angst, I’ll admit it. It’s gotta be well-written, though, and yours is. I love the two observations: “Jenny is perfect” and “I didn’t know he was here.” Those really speak to the narrator’s state of mind.
Ouch. That happened to me a time or two.
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