Adult Swim

No, not the Cartoon Network program (although I am a fan).

Remember being, let's say, twelve years old? It's summertime and you and your pals are down at the neighborhood pool. Everyone is happily doing cannonballs, playing "chicken", and performing underwater acrobatics. Right in the middle of a rousing game of Marco Polo, the zinc-nosed lifeguard blows his whistle and orders everyone out of the pool.

Adult Swim. 15 minutes of standing around, sighing dramatically, giving your friend a little towel whip, and glaring at the one or two adults swimming lazy laps in the pool. This practice should be outlawed, you think to yourself. How dare these saggy, swim cap-festooned grown-ups infringe upon our summertime fun?

After a grueling hour of ellipical blah blah and recumbant bicycling, all I wanted was a couple of laps in the gym's gorgeous, olympic-sized swimming pool. I changed into my darling new swimsuit, rinsed, and chugged my soggy flip-flops into the pool area.

It's crammed with kids. I look...and look...and look. No roped-off lane for laps. There's tot swimming lessons here, kids in day camp there, mom and babies over there. Petulant on the inside, polite on the outside, I ask the teenager with the whistle about lap swimming.

"5:00 - 8:00am weekdays, 7:00-9:00am weekends," she says, in between gum snaps. "You can't give up one lane for lap swimming? It's a big pool," I counter. She stops snapping her gum and fixes me with a weary sneer. "[Sigh]You can try in between aqua classes. Oh, and the camp." She catches sight of a little boy preparing to dive in the shallow end and takes off running, yelling and blowing her whistle.

Damn kids.