A Real Olympic Breath-Holding Experience

I’m clinging to the side of the pool, wheezing, because I’ve spent the last 45 exhausting minutes practicing with one of our nation’s finest synchronized swimming teams. Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry is laughing at me now, laughing so hard his goggles are fogging up and it’s a miracle his nose pin hasn’t popped off with all that snorting. This might very well be the funniest thing Dave has ever seen. He has apparently never seen himself shirtless.

Dave thought it would be a good idea if we tried synchronized swimming Monday. Next time I listen to him, please push me into the Olympic cauldron. If there was such an Olympic event, I would have set a world record in dork Monday (Dave would have won the silver after judges reviewed the photo finish).

Almost immediately, the two of us were light-headed and short of breath. Then we got into the pool.

You can hear laughter underwater. That’s basically all I learned. It wasn’t just Dave, either. It was every single one of these otherwise charming swimmers, too. I apparently make the walrus look pretty regal. Want to know what I looked like? Picture a bunch of elegant swans swimming with a flailing Hawaiian sea cow.

I actually injured one of these poor girls. I know this because her underwater scream was loud enough to be heard above water. I was supposed to become completely vertical, feet up, head down, and she was going to push me through the surface in a beautiful Olympic moment. What the judges saw next, though, was the girl coming to the surface shrieking, goggles askew, clutching her nose, as I, the graceful Hawaiian sea cow, gasped for breath, hand still stinging from where I had hit her.

“Sorry,” I said. “Yes, you are,” she joked.

Headline: America’s Best Synchronized Swimming Hope Injured By Complete Idiot.

Thankfully, she was OK, although I noticed she spent the rest of our practice time away from me, in another part of the pool, approximately in Indonesia. This pool was large enough to have its own government, but these girls were such good, patient teachers that Dave and I left with the confidence that one day, if we ate right and practiced very hard, by the 2000 Olympics in Australia, we would not drown.

I doggie-paddled for 45 fatiguing minutes. Your feet are not allowed to touch the bottom of the pool in this sport. You are supposed to keep your legs and arms moving in underwater figure eights to keep yourself afloat, which I could do fine until they asked me to add even one move. Lift an arm out of the water? Sure, no problem, except why am I sinking, oh, my … gurrgggg.

There was this one move I was supposed to do that involved bringing my knees to my face, dipping underwater backward, and then breaking the water’s surface with just my still and perfectly parallel legs, toes extended. I got my knees to my face OK, but, if you were outside the pool, all you saw above the surface when I was done was a single extended toe. I was told, honest to God, that I hadn’t properly used my “right butt muscle.” I had been, to that point, unaware I HAD a right butt muscle.

What these girls do is beyond me. They lent me goggles and a nose pin, but somebody apparently forgot to lend me the gills. These girls could, if they wanted, stay under water until the 2000 Olympics.

At one point, they formed a human forklift, locking all their bodies together, parallel to the surface, somehow lifting Dave all the way out of the water. If Dave slipped, there was suddenly a helpful foot coming out of the water to keep him steady. Another time, the girls went underwater and, after a few seconds, emerged with a battleship they had just constructed. I’m kidding, obviously. It was a tugboat.

The girls tried to get us to be synchronized with their routines, but Dave and I had trouble doing anything, never mind SYNCHRONIZED. Only time we matched them was when, like their uniforms, we turned blue. The girls communicated underwater, in Dolphin-like squeaks, to coordinate their flawless timing. Dave and I, above water, spoke in squeaks, because of the nosepins.

The only positive thing about any of this is that nobody was forced to see me in a Speedo. I didn’t bring swimming trunks here - traveling tip: always assume you may end up in a pool with a bunch of synchronized swimmers - so I had to wear regular shorts. I had the very real fear, as these girls showed us flips and twirls, that I would emerge above the surface in a ballet-like move only to notice that giggling, snorting Dave had my shorts in his hands.