I’ve always wanted to dye my hair one of those funky colours, so I used a semi-permanent wash-out dye (named Overtone) and died my hair purple recently. It’s not overwhelmingly purple but you can see the purple when light shines on it.
The thing is, I need to protect it from the chlorine when I swim to prevent it from fading too quickly. And I’ve been swimming laps --every morning I can -- at the Y that opened less than a month ago near the corner of our street, on Kingston Road in Toronto.
What do I do to protect my new purple-tinged hair from the chlorinated water, you might wonder? Why, I wear a milk bag under my swimming cap, of course! We get those three-baggers of milk (I believe these are unique to Canada). My son drinks A LOT of milk. He's 13 and now stands at a proud six feet and the growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down. (We even let him drink a morning cup of coffee, hoping it will stunt his growth, but nope...)
(Below: photo of a generic indoor pool; not the YMCA on Kingston Road.)
Anyway, yes. I wear a tacky milk bag under my swimming cap and it actually works: much less water gets in.
I usually do the front crawl for about half my laps and the breaststroke for the other half. I wear goggles so that I can see underwater. I look like I’ve got a black eye when I remove them; but any looser and water would get in, so I’ll live with the temporary shiner.
Yesterday I decided to throw a bit of side stroke into the brew. (I’ve heard it’s good to mix things up and to use different muscles.) The only thing is, even if I’m wearing goggles, I can’t see in front of me when I’m doing the side-stroke!
I “ass-u-me-d” I was nearing the end of the pool whilst side-stroking, so quickly looked ahead underwater and noticed I was actually AT the wall. I quickly PUSHED against it with my right hand, propelling myself away from it to avoid a head injury.
There was a teeny bit cushiness to the wall, which seemed odd... Then the wall turned around! I quickly stuck my head out of the water, mortified.
The wall was actually a tall man’s bum -- a very firm bum, to his credit. I squawked a panicked, profuse apology. Lucky for me, he was totally understanding (and didn’t press charges).
My embarrassment morphed into trying to assign blame: Why on earth did he choose to wear a white bathing suit when the pool’s walls are also white? Why was he standing with his back turned to the lane swimmers? How did he develop such firm buttocks?
Then I calmed myself down and tried to see the big picture. I was thankful that he DID have his back/bum to the lane swimmers. (I mean, what if he’d been facing the other way? I don’t allow my mind to go there...) Also, had I not looked up at the last minute and had he not been there, I probably would have bonked my head on the wall and fallen unconscious in the pool. And while I was there, floating and unconscious, my bathing cap could have fallen off, revealing a floating red-and-white milk bag and purple pool water near my head, making it look like I have purple blood. And who knows whether I’d have actually survived this accident (or the embarrassment)?
So, let this be a lesson to us all. The next time you go shopping for a swimsuit, do yourself a favour and check out your pool’s wall colour first. 😉
While you're here, why not check out my paintings?