The swimming pool was a beast with black tile eyes and chlorinated breath. The Loch Ness of high school gymnasium – filled with sack-clothed fishes and whistle-blowing whales. Splashes that told the truth with thunder unlike doctored scales and fingers shoved down throats.
Littered with forged supplications for pardons of a dozen bevied beauty queens whose synchronized menses assured perfect hair and makeup for math 101 and lunch room frolics.
Dank and smelly, I tasted the mildew as I sucked in breath, spied the perv janitor as I bent awkward in my embarrassment, nauseous in anticipation of hitting the ocean of germs that promised to suck me into its chasm of death.
Go, Rodgers!
I sprung like a coil, rusted and stiff, crashed through a surface of unyielding blue and dropped like a Buick over a cliff. Toes skirted the scum and like rockets they propelled me toward the light. Arms flailing, choking and gasping for air, I crawled out, half dead, rubbing my aching head and uttering voodoo curses at anyone who looked my way.
Yeah, welcome to high school.
To take a dip in Jess’s pool, go here. If you want to do the backstroke with Christine, go here.
Anita Rodgers Mystery Writer 
Ooh! Yours is really good too. You and christine both shot me out of the water this week…nice job, Annie.
Thanks, honey.
Annie
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This is so good, you put your foot in it this week! Very descriptive, i love the opening- the “whales” the “fish”… You’re an excellent writer, Chica. Every day you show us the diversity of your talent.
Go Rodgers! 🙂
LOL chica, you and J with the puns. 😆 I actually enjoyed this prompt and when we decided on it, I knew it would it would center around high school swimming class. Oh how I hated it – lol, can you tell?
Annie
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OMG, that’s exactly the way my high school swimming class was. I detested it!! And of course it was never, ever the last class of the day. 😦
Hey 30! Ain’t that truth? Why is that? Why was pool always in the middle of the day? And no matter what you did you could never get that chlorine-y stink off of you, right? So you smelled like old pool and gym socks the whole afternoon. Yikes. What a nightmare. 😉
Annie
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oh yea. high school. I hated swimming portion of gym…
so – how does this work? who picks the themes? how much time do you get to think and write? just curious…
Hey C!
I suspect many of us hated it. So, glad it’s just a distant icky memory now, eh?
We rotate each week on who picks the theme and then we have a about a week to come up with the post. When we started out we decided we wanted to go with single concept themes because part of it is to try to rise to the challenge, hence the odd selections we seem to come up with. Next week’s should be a doozy. 😉 Once our posts are done and scheduled, we email each other the links and embed them in the posts. And then tada on Friday they post.
Annie
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I was lucky not to have to take swimming in high school because we didn’t have a pool. I flunked YWCA swimming lessons. When I think Of swimming pools I think of fear and panic.
But you did a great job of conveying the feelings you felt in the pool.
Wow you lucky dawg – no swimming? I would’ve given my left pinky for that. 😉 I agree, there is a sort of panic that hangs over public pools, probably I suspect because at least in the old school of teaching you were pretty much thrown in to sink or swim. Not a great way to teach somebody something, eh?
Annie
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Great portrait!
OMG WC! I wrote a swimming pool post as well but soooo differet! 😉
lovely work!
Hey DS!
I know, I went and read and commented and thought it was brilliant. It is eerie how we all did the same theme on the same day. You must be psychic. Thanks for the kudos – I had fun with this one.
Annie
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What a great picture you paint with words alone. I loved swimming, and still do but the pressure of school swimming was horrendous. Especially in those early teenage years, not sure what was worse the swimming or the change rooms…….
Hi Gem!
Oh lord, don’t get me started on the changing rooms – humiliating is all I can say. I have to say, for as much as I love the water, I never did learn to love swimming. I’m not very good at it and I suppose if I ever had to rely on my swimming skills to save my life I’d be in deep trouble. In fact, my deepest fear is being drowned. Yikes.
Annie
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wow . . loved this. the imagery, perfect.
go rodgers, go! 🙂
LOL Red. I can see that go, Rodgers just might stick. My nickname in high school was Rodg – I actually liked it in a way though. Ugh, high school swimming, eh? 😉
Annie
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Eeeeoo (shudders), swimming at high school was horrible.
This is great!
“Littered with forged supplications for pardons of a dozen bevied beauty queens whose synchronized menses assured perfect hair and makeup for math 101 and lunch room frolics.” – nice stuff Annie.
Eeeeoooowww is right, Simonne. Funny, I had a feeling you’d be able to relate to this. Why is it that high school is just a jumble of weird creepy experiences? You have to wonder, don’t you?
Annie
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Nice post and I pictured your story well. I never had to endure the nastiness of a pool in middle school or high school. My poor children have to though.
You’re so lucky never to have gone through it – bites big time. Take my word for it. Your kids have my sympathy. 😉
Annie
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We didn’t have swimming lessons in high school, thankfully. That would have been just one more much dreaded gym class to suffer through. And EEEWWWWW! I am never swimming in a public pool again!
LOL Panther, so sorry to wreck your vision of public pools. This was a high school pool if that is any consolation? 😉
Annie
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