The Clash of Swimming Civilizations

When I was a child I spake as a child; and in my salad days I used to be something of an "all around athlete," as the term was then, playing energetically and not without competence several sudoriferous team sports involving the propulsion of leather balls of differing sizes and shapes from one place to another. Indeed I put away such childish things later than most, and only rather reluctantly. The spirit stayed willing, but the flesh weakened even as it waxed. Yet it was not so much the flesh as the bones that ended my athletic career. They gradually became ponderous, creaky in the joints, and sullenly painful in their response to bumps, bangs, tumbles, and the sudden, jerky movements oddly described as "poetry in motion."

Medical advisors warned me that all this would simply get worse if I did nothing, and they suggested that I should run. (This was before the leading medical exponent of heart-healthy jogging, Dr. James Fixx, dropped dead while running). But running proved highly injurious to my leg joints, ankles, tendons and other parts of my lower extremities, including some that I was unaware I had. It was still a little early for shuffleboard, so I eventually came to swimming laps. Eureka. I could swim without hurting myself.

There are to be sure two potential dangers for the geriatric swimmer. It is in the first place theoretically possible to drown. This is a modest risk but, being definitive in its eventuality, it must at least cross one's mind; the other danger, which is actually much more acute, is that the swimmer will die of boredom. But if you can dodge those two bullets, swimming offers a sensible and safe regime of daily exercise.

Safe is not the same thing as painless. I am part of a group of hard-core masochists who regularly swim at Dillon Gym at seven in the morning. There are potential inconveniences beyond those that immediately spring to mind. If no lifeguard shows up — and since "recreational athletics" are not at the top of the list of Athletic Department priorities, this happens with annoying frequency — we simply waddle off in grumpy disgrace to the showers. But when the system works, it is great. To the benefits of the physical exercise is added a dimension of satisfying sanctimony I have seldom found elsewhere. One of the great advantages, ordinarily, is that the pool is not so crowded as to make swimming unpleasant. But on occasions when DeNunzio is temporarily unavailable to the non-recreational athletes on aquatic sports teams, sizable numbers of undergraduates can show up. The ensuing clash of swimming civilizations is invariably humbling to us old-timers from the athletic point of view, and it can be alarming in other ways as well.

There was such a confrontation this past Monday. As the regular geriatrics sat around in the stairwell waiting for a lifeguard to show up, we were joined by various bronzed gods and goddesses, among them an angelic-appearing young mermaid noisily regaling her teammates with the details of her weekend. Its high point, apparently, had been getting really wasted and effecting an Olympic-class eructation. "I puked in Cap," she announced proudly. A teammate squealed appreciatively: "Oh, like, oh my God, like that's like so, that's like sooo funny!"

From long experience as a college master I know that a surprising number of Princeton students find a strange satisfaction in the public display of their vomitus, and revel in the rich oral traditions of their barfing bouts; but this was, like, nauseating. Our admissions office has come in for its share of mostly ill-considered hard knocks of late; but say what you will it can be no easy task, year in and year out, competing so successfully for what must be a finite supply of attractive young athletes prepared (a) to puke in Cap and (b) to recap their puke with such narrative gusto in stairwells before an audience of middle-aged folks in bathing suits. And even though the number of high school graduates for whom the word "like" constitutes the greater part of a working vocabulary may be large, there is still the question of snagging the ones with the best times.

I was somewhat relieved by a detail that came out of the well-attended faculty meeting later that same day, at which the Dean of the Faculty introduced a large and impressive cohort of new Princeton faculty, briefly identifying the fields of research specialization of the more senior newcomers. One of our visiting "superstar teachers" was identified as a leading expert on "fluid turbulence control." It is certainly high time that the University addressed its problem of fluid turbulence control; but I was surprised to hear that Prof. Rogers' assignment was to the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering rather than to the office of the Dean of Student Life or directly to one of the coaching staffs. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.