Rule #20 - Don’t Get Chlorine In Your Eyes

If this is your first visit at iScatterlings, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

[Inspired by a memory of what my late mother always told me when I was a kid.]

I loved swimming and would stay in the water for 4 hours at a stretch if I was allowed. I used to join the other kids at the local municipal pool after school to swim and play ‘bombs’ and other games. To play ‘bombs’ which I only now consider a maniac’s game considering the dangers involved, we’d line up on the top board and, like parachutists exiting a plane at altitude, jump off it within a split second of the other with legs tucked into the ‘bomb’ position to maintain a giant splash. Sounds a nutty thing to do but hey - we were fun-loving kids eager to push the envelope! We also played what I considered the most dangerous game of all - corner touch or tag. This involved running around the perimeter of the pool and jumping in and out of the water at the corners of the pool until you were unlucky enough to be tagged and so you’d have to chase the group to tag someone else. It was at the corners the pool that a tag occured. Considering the slippery concrete from all the water and the opportunity for one of us to slip and do some serious damage to ourselves, nobody got hurt. We played it until we all had to go to boarding school.

You could smell the chlorine in the pool from 3 miles away!! And this is why my mum always said I must not get chlorine in my eyes! “Like Duh ma, I will swim a length underwater with my eyes shut..?!!” She’d smack me for being cheeky but it was her way of caring. Inevitably, I’d arrive home and my eyes would be cherry red!! And so I’d be grounded for disobeying a parental command but I’d sneek out and go swimming again the next day anyway! What a rebel! I never made it to the Springbok squad - girls got in the way of that ambition but I did set some school and college records.

Swimming is good for you. Ooze the swimmers.