Life doesn't always turn out the way that you want it to, and usually it is the tiny failures that have lasting impact on you, for the most part. My tiny failure was swimming.
When I was young I wanted to do everything my brother did and I wanted to be as good as he was in everything I did that he did. One of the things he did really well was swimming, so when we moved to Delhi the first thing I wanted to do was join the swim team that he was on.
So when I asked if I could join the team the coach told me I had to swim four laps without stopping before they would consider it. I can do that I said, and the coach looked at me and said I am sure you can with practice. I was eight years old, and I don't know if I had ever swum one lap let alone four, but I wanted to join right then so I said I can do it right now watch.
I swam the four laps, and true to their word I was allowed to join the team. I worked hard, my brother was always in the fastest lane, and I was swimming with the babies, I wanted to be next to him at least, so I worked hard. (There were other perks to swimming with him, we would always take a scooter to practice and come home together, and I had all that time alone with him. He was my favorite person in the whole world and swimming was the one thing we had in common, the one thing that bonded us together.)
So I did work very hard, and I began to excel at it. My brother was a backstroker so I too became a backstroker. Soon I was breaking records, and then I realized I really was a good swimmer, maybe I was even better then he was. And as I continued to swim I found that I didn't really care so much about impressing him, I really liked winning, and I liked being better then every one else.
But I was young and the papers weren't as impressed with my national records as they were with cute little LB. The bane of my existence. She was 4 years older then me and she too won all her races and she was the media (at least for swimming) little darling. Bah...
(to be continued)
Who is LB? Less Buttocks? Lazy Bane? Loser Bit###? Light Backstroke?
ReplyDeleteYou were very good at swimming & could have gone on to more had you had better coaching. Now, you're swimming for yourself AND Taya & TSH & Tolar so that you can pull us up the hills.
Go T3!!!!!
Hey, I remember LB, don't I? didn't your brother have a crush on her?
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