I got my start as a writer in the usual way: I swam on an adult swim team, and when we had a coaching change, someone needed to write the team’s newsletter. News-wise, swimming — and especially adult swimming — is hardly college football. So after earnest articles about chocolate milk (nature’s most perfect recovery drink!) and the importance of paying one’s dues to United States Masters Swimming, I started telling my teammates stories. Sometimes, they had something to do with swimming. Sometimes, they did not. If I saw my fellow swimmers most mornings at 5:45 a.m., it seemed only fair to think that I had seem them at their essence: bleary-eyed, slightly tired, barely clothed, floating weightlessly. If that was the case, then certainly I could tell them about the time my daughter may (or may not) have stuck a coin in her nose, about my dog’s going blind, about the violent end of a particularly stupid cat. (It was the last story that garnered one of my favorite responses: a swimmer who was a pillar of the community offered, unbidden, to help me TP the house of the dog’s owner who had carelessly let him get at the cat. It seemed like a fitting solution.)

I began swimming with this group in 2001, shortly after a stress fractured foot sidelined me from 95% of the physical activity in this world, and left the group in early 2008, when a chlorine sensitivity rendered me asthmatic and breathing only through the aid of four different prescription medications. It took pleas from my pulmonologist and a come-to-Jesus meeting with Chris (by then known to all as the Swim Widower) to make this decision. I swam for a few months with a few guys in a saline pool. It wasn’t the same. My swimming career ended for good courtesy of a car wreck several months later.

But for a few short years, there was Gutter Talk: The Weekly Newsletter of Savannah’s Most Serious Adult Swim Team. I wrote it when my children were young, and I still remember the furtive delight of sitting down at the computer for however much time I could spare on Sunday evenings. Those days seemed much more primal: Swim. Work. Raise children. Fall into bed exhausted. Sleep too little. Start again. I wish I had the same discipline now — to hide away at an inflexible time, to sit and write; perhaps the story of my last few weeks would be laid to rest in an essay rather than rattling around in my brain. Alas.

But like an old and fond friend, Gutter Talk called last night at 9:56 p.m. My friend the archaeologist, a woman who has a real name but will be forever known to me as “Indy,” found three old newsletters rattling in the basement of her inbox. She sent them to me. With old and fond friends, I have found that if I loved them then, I love them now. This was true with a high school friend that I called out of the blue on Thursday afternoon, having not seen her since 1985. And this was true with Gutter Talk.

I enjoyed a brief return to a life where when Chris missed me, he joked that he would simply let the aroma of a bottle of bleach waft out — which would summon the smell of his favorite swimmer. Where I would write down every single set I would swim. Where I met the friends that meant so much to me then and mean just as much to me now.

Sometimes when I come across drawings by my children, old receipts, long-ago postcards, the occasional college party flyer, I will simply tuck them away for future discovery. It is wrong, I know, for I should purge and say good-bye. Perhaps that was what Indy was doing as she cleaned out her inbox last night. Who knows? But for me, I was grateful to see it, and with some delight, I share with you now Gutter Talk — 28 January 2007 — in all of its copied and pasted glory, for I am completely without the necessary skills to change the spacing or the font.

Some things never change.

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My mother’s question haunts me every time I put on a swimsuit: “Does [Swim Widower] like you all beefed out like that?” (When I later read in Swimming World Magazine that Australia had hired a sports psychologist to work with its female swimmers, I understood exactly the type of question that prompted that decision.) She also religiously tracks my (nonexistent) shoulder injury. I love my mother dearly, but as we’ll both acknowledge, we often have a difficult relationship. So I’m not sure which of us was more surprised when I called to tell her that I was coming to Bowling Green to swim in a meet. I blame it on a swimsuit. Splish’s pink elephant suit instantly reminded me of Bowling Green. As a kid, when we’d visit my grandparents, I loved passing by a local liquor store whose sign featured a smiling pink elephant, sitting in a martini glass, spraying liquid from its trunk. I adored that sophisticated and merry pachyderm, and I would beg my teetotaling grandparents to drive me by the sign at least once a day. (Although they hated liquor, they loved me.) Whether it was fate — or a shrewd marketing decision by a swimsuit manufacturer — I felt compelled to make the trip. What can you expect from a trip mandated by a swimsuit? I had a safe flight, but as often happens in my life, things went slightly haywire. For instance? My brother offered to host a pre-race meal of grilled chicken and pasta, but at the last minute, decided to surprise me with that traditional training meal, mouth-of-hell chili. (It was the classic bait-and-switch.) The chili, in turn, gave me bad dreams that night, my favorite being that I was stuck in a van with my lanemates as we grew increasingly lost on the way to the meet. At one point, Lysette burst into tears and yelled, “You didn’t give me a Christmas present!” What could this all mean? Apparently, it did not mean that I was cool, calm, and collected, which (let’s face it) has never been my strong point. On the morning of the meet, I was bouncing around the house like Jerry Lewis — Jerry Lewis after a double espresso and a few pep pills. I was making my mother crazy. I was making myself crazy. I had been out of the water for 54 hours, and I was about to blast off. To get rid of me, my mother suggested that I get ready for the meet while she packed the snacks. I am still not certain what my mother had in mind as she prepared this spread for a swim meet that (for me) lasted 90 minutes, but here is what she packed: 1 gallon of Gatorade, 4 bottles of water, 3 cans of Coca Cola, 12 packages of raisins, 8 packages of Lance’s Malt crackers, 4 bananas, 2 apples, 2 Power Bars, and a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with shredded wheat. As I lugged the canvas bag and cooler into the natatorium, I encouraged her to share with the other swimmers. (She plied a banana into the hand of an unsuspecting man in a Speedo, which now that I think about it, sounds awfully Freudian.)  I ended up consuming 1/2 quart of Gatorade, a bottle of water, and 1/2 of a banana.  The other 12,000 calories remain unaccounted for. I suppose I should mention here that I swam. Western Kentucky apparently fields two types of breaststrokers: Those who swim a lot faster than me, and those who visit France solely for the purpose of swimming leisurely, heads-up breaststroke. As their very own breaststroking problem child, the organizers placed me in the fast heats in both the 100 and 200, where I promptly got smoked.  Happily though, I met my time goals and swam faster than I’d swum before. I also won my age group in the 100 and 200 — perhaps aided by the fact that I was the only one in my age group in both events — and placed, respectively, second and first overall among the women in the 100 and 200. (And yes, there were other women swimming.) My other events served only to remind me that I should stick to the 100 and 200 breaststroke. My 50 breaststroke time was the same as the first half of my 100. Also, have you ever met anyone who goes the same time in the 100 breaststroke and IM (which supposedly has the benefit of 3 “faster” strokes)? Or who negative splits the 100 IM by over three seconds? You have now. Before we left the pool, Mom hovered over the awards table and loudly demanded my ribbons:  She wanted to pin them to my jacket and then prance me about town, flush with success. (Sadly, I’m not making that up.) To my infinite relief, the ribbon table had run out of awards, so Mom had to content herself with telling the ice cream scooper, the store patrons, the video store clerk, my family, her neighbor at the newspaper box, the waitress at dinner that night, the waitress at breakfast the next morning, and the short order cook that I was a champion swimmer. I suspect that by now, in my absence, Bowling Greenians have been informed that I set world records in the events. In a fitting grand finale, the airline lost half of my luggage on the way home — the half that contained my swim gear.  It reappeared in the middle of the night, dazed, bedraggled, and smelling funny, but it’s back. And so, here I am, too, dazed, bedraggled, but hopefully not smelling funny, and back.  What is my next goal?  While I liked my times, I know that I can do better at the April meet in Hilton Head.  I am now focusing on becoming the Six Million Dollar ‘Snipe (we can rebuild her better, faster stronger); making a national qualifying time in the 100 breast (I’m not very far!); and staying away from swimsuits that lead me to do strange things. I hope your week goes swimmingly. The Guttersnipe