There are few things from my life story that are worth putting on paper. Not that I haven't any stories or experiences, but it seems anything significant in my life has yet to be started or yet to be finished. Hi, I’m Margaret. I’m tired a lot, I eat a lot, I sleep a lot. I spend the hours of my youth in high school, clinging to my coffee thermos as though my life depends on it. There’s something to be said about fifteen-year-olds who labor under the delusion of grandeur and evaluate their experiences as eye-opening or significant or, in any way, shape, or form important to anyone but themselves. But, as all fifteen-year-olds love to tell themselves (and as all parents, teachers, coaches and other authorities love to tell them) we’re all special! and have not yet reached the brain capacity to realize that if all of us are special, by definition, we’re all ordinary.

So, here’s my ordinary-by-default experience from such a special life.

Swimming was always a big deal to my mom. I think my grandparents still hold to the dream that I might go to the Olympics any day now, but that’s a different rant for a different day. When I was seven-years-old my mom signed me up for the swim team, reassuring me that if I didn’t like it I could quit.

I hated it, and moms are liars.


It took me two years to warm up to swimming. Please understand fully, by warming up to I mean tolerated without throwing a fit every time Mom dragged me out the door to practice. The water was cold, the swim coach was an old prune named Allie who worked me so hard I once
vomited in the car from exhaustion, and, although we weren’t sure of the cause at the time, the chlorine gave me migraines. I hated the water. The only reason I started to go to swim practice willingly was because I started to win. And I like to do things I’m good at.

By the time I was nine-years-old my life revolved around pleasing that old Nazi, Allie. Allie was a different sort of person. She loved me. She loved that I raced, that I won, that swimming was suddenly the only thing I cared about. I still remember that third or fourth year, when I began to realize how much I appreciated that old lady who brought me to tears by making me kick with tennis shoes on. I remember walking up to her every day after practice and thanking her for coaching me. I still hated swimming. I still danced and whooped with joy whenever Mom would let me skip practice. But I loved Allie.

I still hold to the belief that Allie is the sole reason I don’t like nice coaches. Her yelling rarely bothered me, but I remember the feeling of betrayal I felt when she made me walk to the bathroom with my feet turned out like a duck, as she let all the grownups laugh at me. I still don’t think that exercise ever helped me out with my breast-stroke kick like she claimed it would. I loved my coach though. I can still recall with maybe a bit too much pride, beating an older guy and howling with glee when her blood shot eyes locked on the poor boy’s face as she pointed a gnarly old finger at me shouting, “You let it beat you? How could you let that beat you?” I don’t think I had ever had such an honor, being Allie’s it who beat all the boys.

The winter we spent cooped up in rented high school pools, but the summers were outside at Allie’s. That pool was almost as old as Allie herself and was basically held together by
duct tape. I never found out whether or not that rumor about covering up a crack in the diving board with toothpaste was ever true, but I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if it was. Allie’s pool was my home away from home. I had learned to adore swimming, and although Allie eventually passed me on to a different coach for the older kids, I swam for her. I won for her. Whenever I finished a race I remember passing by my present coach and running to high five Allie, and she would smile with those ugly yellow teeth of hers and say, “That’s my Maggie!”

When I was 13, Allie gave me my first job. She paid me under minimum wage, but, as working at my age was technically against the law, I never confronted her about it. She used to sit and tell me stories about when she was a kid, how she escaped Germany after being accused of betraying her country, about how she was almost struck by lightning in a swimming pool. Ever since she carried a little device that was supposed to show a red light when lightning was near the pool. Lightning was the single thing I think that lady was afraid of. More than once did she pronounce lighting in close proximity and order everyone to get out of the water on a clear day. I still remember that as the best summer of my life, working at the pool for Allie.

Allie was eighty-two-years-old, and was never going to stop, never. “She’ll retire when she’s dead,” Mom used to say. Whenever old swimmers asked about her, they never asked if she was still coaching. They only asked if she was still alive. I remember grown men used to walk
into her swimming pool with exclamations and hugs, and they’d turn to me and say, “She coached me when I was your age!” And I’d sit there, thinking of my adulthood, running into her
pool one summer with gold, Olympic medals around my neck and telling kids how she had coached me. Allie was never going to stop.

It was 2011, I think, when her pool closed. She still coached. I still swam. But losing her business took a bigger toll on her than I would have ever imagined. By the year after that she was too weak to continue. They tore down her team and refused to let her coach. I tried to swim on, I really did. They had told me by the time I was fourteen I would be a big shot junior Olympic swimmer, but Allie was gone. I went from nicknames to a coach who didn’t bother to learn my last name. I couldn’t tell anyone why I had stopped caring. I still remember that first race without her. I stood on the block, the buzzer went off, I jumped into the water with the hallow fear of losing and the determination that always followed it. And then, as the cold covered my body, as the taste of chlorine overcame my every sense— I just swam. I didn’t race. I didn’t care. Why care, why swim for someone who didn’t bother to learn my full name? So I swam, for the very first time, without trying. I remember afterwords Mom had asked me why I had swum so slow. I had no answer. Swimming had become my identity, my sole outlet, my sole plan for college and careers and life. Now it was gone. I had a thousand reasons to care. My parents, scholarships, pride alone, but I just ... didn’t. Not without Allie. I went home that day and hid all my trophies and medals under my bed. I didn’t care. Allie was gone, there was no one to please, no one to make proud now. Swimming became a sort of hellish ritual. I would go to practice. I would tell myself to care, I would list the reasons: college, parents, reputation, pride. I would tell myself I was there to glorify God, but it didn’t work. I would stand on that block every meet and wonder why. Why should I care.

I’m fifteen now, and I still don’t race for the sake of winning. I race sometimes, but for different reasons. Usually, I have to be mad at someone. It’s not exactly the greatest thing to swim for, but it keeps the pounds off and besides, it seems every corner I turn there’s nice coaches, ready for hugs and smiles. Sometimes I wonder how that old Nazi is doing. Grandma said she saw her at the grocery store once. She told me how miserable poor Allie is. I would have figured, I think she’d rather be dead than out of kids to coach. I was tempted to beg my parents to let me ask her to coach just me, but they would have refused. I’m not sure if she’d be up to it anyway. I took Allie’s retirement as more of a death announcement. It still troubles me today to think of her, cooped up in an old house with no one to shout at. It’s maddening sometimes. Maddening to think that anyone would ever have the gall to take her rights away. Just one more thing for my list I suppose. One more thing to swim for.