The Brick
Fourteen of us boys are in the changing rooms and expected to get naked and changed in to swimming trunks the size of napkins just like that, as if the unveiling of one’s pubescent genital parts to a mass of boys who have just learnt sarcasm should be considered ‘a good thing’. Today is swimming, and for three hours we’ll be stuck racing back and forth, linear and dull, because our teacher Mr Thomas doesn’t like any ‘mucking around’.That means there’s lots of mucking around, only instead of it being stationary it’s integrated in to our lengths, as we mock Mr Thomas and discuss how he does his Laser hair removal (like all swimming teachers, the man has freakishly smooth legs).
There’s one part that’s good, though, and that’s collecting the brick. Each boy takes it in turn to drop the bright red brick in to the pool. It gets dropped deeper and deeper as we go, so that the boy who starts is happy and the last boy to go is terrified.
I am the fifth to go. That means a depth of around three metres. Not much, but the brick is near the grid that sucks water through so hard that you can feel it on the way down. As I go under, down in to the murky blue, I feel it pull at my hair, or I think I do. I’m scared that if I get too close it’ll get trapped and I’ll die a slow, violent death.
I get the brick with no problem, and as I kick away from the depths I feel something rush in to my lungs. Not water, but it feels like it. It’s fear, I know, and some excitement. I don’t go swimming very much nowadays, but maybe I should. Maybe it’d be good to reclaim it.