Fun at the Goal Meet - Omaha ~1973

Each year, our Wichita Swim Club team designated one of the summer's swim meets as the "Goal Meet". It was intended to be a fun trip; while we took the swimming competition seriously, the activities we experienced along the way were much more important. The Goal Meet was a bus trip, and each one featured at least one opportunity to do something entertaining. It also seemed that every goal meet featured some sort of impressive performance from one or more of our team members.

I only remember a few things about the Omaha Goal Meet. One was the opportunity we had to go off the 10-meter diving platform during a break in the swim meet. I climbed up the long ladder and was looking forward to a new and exciting diving experience.

The Olympic divers you see on television make it look so easy. They walk right up to the edge and do backwards handstands and stuff, right on the edge of this huge dropoff. Trust me, 10 meters is VERY high up there. From that height, the pool looks like a postage stamp.

I sorta scooted up to the edge of the platform and looked over, just like I would if I were at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I looked at the pool and thought, "Dang, if I don't jump completely straight, I could miss that little dot of water." I stayed up there for a while, just sort of looking around and trying to imagine working up the courage to jump off from such a great height. I did not want to be branded a chicken if I turned around and crawled back down the ladder.

Finally, though, I concluded that being a chicken was infinitely preferable to being a greasy spot on the concrete deck so many miles below. I turned around and headed for the ladder.

Glenn Nyberg had also climbed the ladder as a first time 10-m visitor, as I had. He had also looked over the edge and had seen how tiny the people looked, and how uninviting the drop appeared. Since it was obvious that no sane person would ever jump off, much less dive, I assumed that Glenn would be heading for the ladder as well.

Instead, though, he just ran up to the edge and dove off.

It was a pretty nice dive, considering that he'd never done anything like that before. I don't think he was hurt at all. (Or if he was, he never admitted it.) But Glenn's bravado didn't motivate me to try it -- the only affect it had on me was that my cowardly retreat went mostly unnoticed; everybody was watching him.

Sometime later, Glenn enhanced his reputation as a daredevil by diving from the top of the WSC pool's heater hut into the 4-foot water at the shallow end of the pool. The hut wasn't all that close to the edge of the pool, either, so he spent most of his flight soaring over solid concrete. Somehow, though, he managed to make it into the water without killing himself.

Funny, but now that I think about it, just about everything Glenn ever did was followed by someone saying, "It's amazing he didn't kill himself."

(Of course, the only role he played in the movies we shot with the swim team DID end with his character killing himself. Hmmm. Food for thought.)

Anyway, back to Omaha Goal Meet memories: I also remember seeing "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes", which wasn't a bad movie, except that I always thought the title should be "The Computer THAT Wore Tennis Shoes". I was hoping to make out with one of the girls during the movie, but for some reason, they all waited until I had chosen a seat, and then selected their spots in a section that was at the opposite end of the theatre.

(Hmm. The same thing happened on the bus ride, too. Once, though, I actually got to sit next to Beth Alley, who I liked a lot. I kept trying to figure out a way to put the "moves" on her, but when even the old "yawn and put your arm around her" ploy ended up with a major bruise on my arm, I gave up.)

Finally, there's the memory of watching Roger Neugent swimming the 400IM. It was the final event of the meet, and as Roger's heat was in the water, Coach Deardorf was calculating the team scores. Roger was loafing the race, and at the end of the backstroke was in last place in his heat.

Coach Deardorf finished his calculation, and immediately proceeded to the edge of the pool. "Roger", he yelled. Neugent continued swimming his leisurely breaststroke, still in dead last. "ROGER!", Deardorf yelled. Neugent stopped swimming and popped his head out of the water. Without his glasses, Roger had no chance of seeing who was yelling at him, but he squinted over toward the deck anyway. "Huh?" he said. "We need 4th place!" Deardorf yelled. "Huh?"

"WE NEED FOURTH PLACE!!" Roger nodded, said "OK", and went back to swimming.

What followed was one of the most impressive efforts I've ever seen. With half the race already over, Neugent cranked out an outstanding comeback. Before the breaststroke was even over, he had taken over the desired 4th place, but since he couldn't see very well, he kept cranking. His freestyle was churning the water like a speedboat.

When he finished the race, Roger squinted up at the results board. Couldn't see it. He squinted at the surrounding lanes. Couldn't tell who had finished in which position. He turned toward the coach and shrugged his shoulders and held his palms up in the universal "Well?" gesture.

As witnesses to his fabulous effort, our entire team was jumping up and down on the deck. When we saw that he had no clue whether he'd achieved his goal, we all yelled in unison, "Neugent...YOU WON!" He nodded and gave us his famous grin. Then he crawled out and laid himself down on the deck to recover.

Someone took a photo of the exhausted warrior in this flattened position. The caption that accompanied that photo in the team yearbook was wholely appropriate: "God is Love. Love is blind. Neugent is almost blind. Therefore, Neugent is almost God."

If that's not impressive, I don't know what is.

How I Got the Nickname "Speed" ~1973

My high school swim coach had to bend the rules to get me a letter jacket. My college swim coach pleaded with me to "retire" so he wouldn't have to cut me. On the Wichita Swim Club, the four fastest boys in an age group were called the "A" relay -- I was usually on the "F" relay.

I was not a particularly fast young swimmer. Compared to my teammates, in fact, I totally sucked.

So how come I was the one who ended up with the nickname "Speed"?

A little background: The summer swim meet season had several important meets to train for. The first one was the "Air Capital Meet", which was held at our very own Wichita Swim Club pool at the Love Aquatic Center. [NOTE: Wichita is known as the Air Capital of the World, because so many big airplane companies have plants there -- Beechcraft, Boeing, Cessna, Lear, etc. The name has nothing to do with the quality of the atmosphere, which quite frankly smelled of stockyards and oil refineries.] Another was our team's "Goal Meet", which included a team bus trip to some exotic city, such as Omaha or San Antonio. (The Goal Meet was notable more for its opportunities for motel shenanigans and bus-ride romances than for the quality of its swim competition, but that's another story.) But the BIG MEET of the summer was the Region 8 Championships.

Don't ask me what Region 8 is, and don't ask me how many Regions there are. I've never seen a map with these mystical Regions listed on it. All I know is that the Region 8 Championships featured swimmers from Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas...and maybe some others. Who knows? But at least you knew there'd be swimmers there who, perhaps suffering some sort of visual disorder, couldn't distinguish between an individual and a group -- calling everyone "y'all". And it was an important meet for the Wichita Swim Club to win.

Since the Region 8 meet was the Big One for the summer, only the best swimmers could attend. There were qualifying times that you'd have to achieve within the summer in order to be allowed to sign up for the meet. And since I sucked, I was not able to hit those qualifying times.

So all the good swimmers shave down and head to some exotic place like Little Rock or Kansas City to compete for the honor of the team and the glory of the Championship Trophy, while the rest of us were left behind to wallow in our crumminess.

Or at least it could have been that way. But our leaders were too smart to let us do any wallowing. They allowed us to go to an alternate meet. Maybe we weren't good enough to go to Kansas City, but by golly, we could go to Manhattan instead. Whoopie!

(No, I'm not talking about the Manhattan where the Empire State Building is. I'm talking about the Manhattan where Kansas State University is. Smells like cows, it does, which may not sound too good, but is probably a better fragrance than the multi-faceted stench of the Air Capital.)

The Manhattan meet gave us an opportunity to compete and possibly achieve "A" times, which would allow us to go to a better class of meet the next year. And while it was certainly more prestigious to go to a championship meet, there were some benefits to swimming at Manhattan. 1) Since it was a "minor" meet, there were plenty of opportunities to goof off and create mischief, and 2) Becky Love was the coach who went with us. (Sigh. That, too, is another story.)

Because of the team's relaxed attitude about the meet, I decided to have some fun with it, right from the beginning. Normally, when you filled out event entry cards for the meet, you'd post your previous best time. Sometimes, if you were feeling frisky, you might even enter with a time slightly faster than you'd ever gone, just because you thought you might have improved since your last competition. But I took it several steps further. I entered each event with INCREDIBLY FAST times -- times that I not only had never gone, but that very few people anywhere had ever gone. They weren't quite Olympic-caliber entry times, but not that far off.

This would guarantee that at a meet like Manhattan, I'd been seeded as the favorite in every single event I entered. Such audacity in entry times required equivalent bravado in the box for "Name". I entered each event under the name "Speed" Heggy.

It was a joke. I honestly thought they toss out all my entries as being utterly ridiculous. I figured that I'd end up being shown on the heat sheet as a "No Time" entry, and would swim with the slowest entrants.

But just in case...

I went to a local T-Shirt Shop and had the word "SPEED" printed in big red letters on the front of the shirt. And once the meet started, I asked my teammates to loan me any medals they'd been awarded. Since I didn't swim the first few events while several of my quicker buddies did, I had almost a dozen medals in my possession before I stepped up to the blocks for the first time.

I pinned all of this hardware to the front of my "SPEED" shirt and walked up to the heating area as if I were God's Gift to Swimming. I tried to smile at my competitors with the type of condescension that showed utter contempt for their upcoming pitiful efforts to beat me. As I walked to the blocks, I noticied that there were more people with their eyes on the pool than there normally were for events such as this. I heard whispers from the spectators; "Look, there's that Speed guy. Do you think he's really that fast?" and "He doesn't look big enough or strong enough to do those times. I gotta watch this."

As the heat was called, I actually got up on the blocks still wearing the medal-covered T-shirt. I took my time removing it, making a great show of trying to flex my pitifully small muscles the way a bodybuilder would. I tossed the shirt back to my timer, smiled a big grin to the crowd, and gave all my new fans a little wave. Then I put on my competitor's game face. I tried to scowl and look like a guy who was about to pummel his competitors like the insignificant scum that they were. The starter spoke into the microphone. "Take your marks..."

Of course, I got my ass kicked. Badly. After all, I was swimming in the fastest heat, but I wasn't even close to being one of the fastest guys. Everyone else finished a loooonnnng time before I did.

When I finally reached the wall, the timer leaned over to me, obviously concerned. "You OK, Speed?" she asked. I took a deep breath and nodded. "It just hasn't been the same since I had that lung removed last week, so soon after my kidney operation" I said. She had no idea how to reply to that, so I grabbed my weighted T-shirt and headed back to the team tent.

By the end of the weekend, I had over 40 medals hung from my shirt. Thankfully, the spectators and citizens of Manhattan were willing to play along with my little joke. "Good luck, Speed," they'd say, and I'd salute them and wink. "Don't worry, Speed, you'll win the next one." They'd cheer every time I took the blocks.

The guys who actually did win the events weren't quite so thrilled with me, but I managed to escape the weekend without being beaten up, banned from the sport, or robbed of my T-shirt. And I ended up making some new friends, gaining a fun story to tell, and becoming something of a legend among the "F" relay crowd.

I eventually did give the medals back. But not the nickname.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

How I Became a Swim Coach ~1982

Once I had been asked to "retire" from the college swim team at KU, I began to swim on my own. At first, I just went to the school's evening lap swim and did occasional serious sets interspersed with serious flirting with the female lap swimmers. I was able to stay in reasonably good shape, and at the same time hone my skills with the ladies.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I actually didn't have any social skills to "hone", so maybe I should've used different words. How about "I talked with lady lap swimmers and discovered many of the world's most egregiously ineffective flirting methods." Still, I suppose that learning from a long uninterupted stream of horrid and embarassing social mistakes could be construed as "honing"...perhaps I'll let the statement stand.

One of these ladies was an excellent swimmer named Debbie Thornton. She was cute and friendly, and seemed happy to swim workout sets with me. I flirted as hard as I could, but got no response. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure she had no idea that I was even flirting with her. She was there to swim, and she enjoyed whupping me in those workouts.

But she was an older woman, alas. She graduated, and left me to swim my laps all alone. I quickly discovered that I needed the challenge of having other swimmers doing the sets with me. So, when I left KU, I once again looked for a team to swim with.

After short stints with the girls 12-and-under age group at Wichita Swim Club (it was an issue of workkout times, not ability -- really!), I ended up joining the West Branch YMCA team, where I moved up to swimming with 12-year-old boys. That worked fairly well, but still wasn't providing the cameraderie I preferred from my workout mates.

But I stuck with it until I moved to Denver. And that's when my career as a "Masters" swimmer really took off.

I moved into a small apartment on the Hampden frontage road. About 1/2 mile away, construction was underway on a brand new YMCA facility. I inquired about membership, liked what I saw, and signed up. When the pool opened, I was swimming laps from the very first day.

There were three of us; myself, a spicy redhead named Kerrin Long, and Jeff "the Ref" Dean. We started organizing our own workouts, and then asked the pool manager if they'd ever considered hosting an adult swim team. It turned out that the Aquatics Director had always wanted to be a coach. So she took over and started coaching our fledgling team.

Her name was Dawn, and she shared the coaching duties with her husband Dan. Though I had reason to suspect that Dawn sometimes experienced challenges when it came to telling the truth, she did know enough about swimming to be a pretty good coach. The team grew.

But as often happens in such organizations, the YMCA experienced an abundance of "mobility". Dawn/Dan found other opportunities and moved on. They were replaced by a college student -- a cute young blond named "Julie". Like Dawn, Julie had a pretty good head for swimming, but unlike her predecessor, was susceptible to other temptations. After the first few weeks, she developed a "relationship" with one of the guys on our team. We didn't mind the first subtle flirtations, but when Julie and Bob started engaging in heavy makeout sessions while the rest of us were trying to do a kick set, well, it became a bit distracting. Julie left the "Y" shortly thereafter.

The new coach was Randy, who could barely swim, but was an outstanding marathon runner. I guess they figured that his athletic experience gave him the ability to understand training methodolgies, etc. Heck, a workout is a workout, right?

He actually wasn't that bad. But there were a few frustrations. As we approached the date for the State Championship meet, Randy sat down with each of us to discuss goals. He asked me what times I wanted to hit at the State Meet. I replied that I'd like to break a minute in the 100 butterfly. "NO WAY!" he shouted. "NOBODY can go that fast!" He was aghast; he was convinced that I was insane, overconfident, and probably stupid, too. Nobody can go that fast.

Well, if our dear coach had bothered to look at last year's state results, he'd have seen that breaking a minute would probably place 4th or 5th in my age group. And if he'd have been paying attention to the times I could swim in workout, he'd have seen that my goal was not outlandish at all. But his fundamental lack of swimming knowledge, combined with his runner's arrogance made him blind to these realities. He was still upset with me after the meeting, and we both walked out of there shaking our heads.

He was gone two days later.

Then came Chris. Big guy, charismatic smile, couldn't swim a stroke. He was a hockey player. Again, the "well, he's an athlete, so he must be able to coach" philosophy sprang forth from the YMCA management. He pretty much just stood around on the deck and collected his paycheck while we went back to figuring out our own sets.

So when Chris quit a few weeks later, Jeff the Ref and I ran into the Director's office, fell to our knees and began begging. "Please, please don't hire another non-swimmer to coach our team. Please?"

"Hey," he said, "Softball season just ended, so we can get Frank Johnson to come in and take over your team. His softball squad won nearly half their games last season, so you know he's a good coach. He's even got his own whistle."

Amazingly enough, there was no violence. Jeff and I were firm, though, and continued to insist that the Masters team coach MUST have swimming experience. "OK, so where do swimmers come from?", the Director asked. Jeff and I looked at each other and reached a mutual decision. "We'll just do it ourselves," we said. The Director spent a moment in frantic thought. "Well," he said, "I might be able to swing it if you agreed to do this coaching as a volunteer thing..."

Hmmm. Hours of work for no pay? Extra duties without any compensation whatsoever? Having to actually prepare workouts instead of just showing up to swim?

Well, contrast those penalties with the thought of swimming for another incompetent coach. Compare a little extra work vs. another string of people who don't know what times are possible, and who wonder how you hold a competition with no helmets, sticks, or nets at the end of the pool. Sigh. We agreed to do the job.

And here it is, over twenty years later, and I'm still coaching. I love it. Jeff the Ref has also continued his connection with sports business; he has coached various teams over the years and is now the owner of a successful massage business.

As much as I owe to the great coaches I've had over the years, I guess I owe a bit to the crappy coaches, too. Thanks, folks. I hope you found something that's been as much fun for you as coaching has been for me. I am in your debt.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—Various ~1965–1982

I never intended to be a swim coach. In fact, I never actually intended to become a swimmer. It just sorta happened. The basic decision path was this: hang around the house during the summer and risk being assigned chores vs. hang around the pool and live a life of sun, cannonballs, and snacks from vending machines. No brainer.

When Herbert the Pervert (my best friend in the neighborhood) suggested that I join the Harvest Park swim team at age 9, it wasn't that I really wanted to do it...it was more that I simply didn't have anything better to do. The rest of my life has been dramatically shaped by that rather ambivalent decision. What follows is a brief summary of memories of my swimming years and some of the coaches who participated in making me into who I am today.

Ed Poley, Harvest Park coach: This guy could swim 50 meters underwater, which to my 10-year-old mind was positively Houdini-esque. I also remember him telling us about the magical kingdom called the Wichita Swim Club, where workouts lasted for hours, spine-breaking discipline was enforced, and mythological swimming speeds were routinely attained. In describing the WSC swimmers, Ed once told us that the boys on that team were so muscular that their chests were THIS big (whereupon he made the universal Hooters gesture) -- to be honest, it kinda freaked me out to think of boys with cleavage.

Steve Miller, Harvest Park coach: Nice guy with fair complexion; always had the white zinc-oxide nose thing going on. I never learned what he did when he wasn't coaching snot-nosed Park Board swimmers, but I always imagined that he was practicing hard with a garage band and eventually became the guy who I heard on the radio singing "Fly Like an Eagle". Hey, it could be...

Brad Tompkins, Harvest Park coach: Brad was an impressive butterflyer, and a funny guy (two qualities that don't always go together). We had fun when he was the coach. A couple of years later, when I was being recruited to swim for the Friends University Swim Team, I saw Brad's name plastered all over their swim team's record board. I may have continued to be impressed with this public display of Brad's speed, except for the fact that I ended up at KU, and none of his FU records would've qualified him to make the travelling squad at KU. And speaking of KU...

Dick Reamon, University of Kansas coach: Nicknamed "The Duck" because of his nasal voice and waddling walk, Reamon coached the Jayhawks to 8 or 9 consecutive Big 8 Swimming Championships. I was not fast enough to make the team, but in 1972 there was no competition for pool time (Women's Swimming had not yet come to KU), so there was no "cut" -- everybody got to work out.

The KU swim team was a powerhouse. There were lots of fast guys. In my best event, the 500 freestyle, there were at least 4 guys who could beat me by more than 30 seconds. In other words, there was no chance in hell that I was going to compete for a spot on the starting squad.

There were about ten of us in this predicament. We loved swimming and wanted to be part of the team, but we lacked the talent, skill, discipline, and training it took to compete at the NCAA Division 1 level. Coach Reamon had no use for us as racers, but he knew that if he kept us around, we'd be happy to help with poolside chores that the scholarship athletes shunned. Therefore, he created a special practice group for the slow kids.

They called us "The Zoo". While we preferred to think that the name was applied because we were such a bunch of athletic animals, I suspect that it had more to do with the coach's unconscious wish that we were all locked up behind bars.

Whatever the reason for the name, though, the Zoo was a great group. Our most respected member was Vince Zubowicz, who couldn't swim very fast but kept the team GPA up by contributing his consistant 4.0 semesters. Less respected, but still a lot of fun were:

—Allan B. Caudle (the "B" stood for "BS" -- he later became a successful advertising weiner, sort of a sprint butterfly version of Darren Stevens)
—Jimmy "Tarzan" Jewel (his jungle yell could summon elephants from as far away as Topeka, which probably has nothing to do with the fact that I sorta dated his sister once),
—Steve Case (who might be the guy who founded AOL -- but probably not...cuz if he was, don't you think he'd have given cushy, high-paying jobs to all his old Zoo teammates? I'm just sayin'...)
—Joe "Inflated Résumé" Greenwell (constantly telling stories of his prowess with sports, money, women, etc. without ever offering a single shred of evidence to support his claims -- I have no idea if there was any truth to the rumor that he was later arrested for trying to sneak into a high-school girl's gym locker room, but no one who heard the rumor tried to argue on behalf of his character)
—Mickey "Fat Man" Canaday (see other entries within these chronicles for many details of Mickey's exploits)... and of course,
—Terry Heggy (your humble narrator)

We Zoo inmates were allowed to work out with the "real" swimmers during running and weight-lifting workouts, but had our own swim times (in the evening, when all the other guys were eating dinner). We sometimes had a coach (Bruce Bove, who was for some reason known as "Bovide"), but sometimes we just made up our own workouts. When the meets came, we were given the enviable tasks of installing touch pads, setting up timers' chairs, making sure that there were enough dry towels to go around, etc.

It was fun. I loved being part of the Zoo.

But in 1973, the winds of change blew in, carrying the subtle scent of Title IX. Women's swimming came to KU. Pool time became coveted, and the special hours set aside for the Zoo were no longer available.

Coach Reamon was very gracious about it. Though his "A Team" practices were already overcrowded, he generously granted us the opportunity to continue to try to make the squad. I'll never forget his words: "Terry," he said, "I'm not going to cut you from the team. You are welcome to join the First String workout squad. But you know as well as I do how difficult it will be for you to swim and compete with that elite group." He paused and took a deep breath. Then, in his famous quacking voice said, "I'm not going to cut you. But it would be in everyone's best interest if you were to quit."

Hey, I'm a team player. I am totally respectful of everyone's best interest. But I chose to call it "retirement" instead of "quitting".

Everyone on the Zoo made the same decision. Oh, we still installed touchpads and folded towels, but now we did it for both the mens and womens teams. And to tell you the truth, watching the women's team was actually a lot more interesting than watching the men. (But that's another story. We're talking about coaching influences here.)

The Duck retired soon afterwards as well. I understand that he later became a very successful high school sports coach there in Lawrence. He's a good man.

He was succeeded by Gary Kempf, who is my age and swam at KU when I did. Even though he was a phenomenal athlete and one of the hardest workers I've ever known, I never bothered to show him any special respect. Hell, he lived in my dorm, and he had the ugliest Roger Daltry haircut you've ever seen. He deserved all the name-calling and short-sheeting that Mickey and I dished out. Still does.

I know. I know. I've strayed a bit from my original subject of coaching influences. I have talked briefly in other articles about Doug Sidles, John Deardorf, and Bill Spahn -- all coaches for whom I have the utmost respect -- so I'm not going to share any other details about these fine gentlemen here.

Everyone I've mentioned here has been a positive influence on my own career as a swim coach. I learned from each and every one of them. But as influential as these role models have been, they are NOT the reason I began coaching.

That particular motivation came from my experience as a Masters swimmer. And that, my friends, is another story.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—Becky Love ~1973

Why would someone want to be a swimmer?

• The workouts are brutal; most people think running 5 miles is tough -- we swam farther than that every single day during the summer.
• The chemicals are nasty; your hair gets bleached and brittle, you skin gets dry and flaky, and you walk around constantly smelling like a bottle of bleach. In the days before effective goggles (yes, I am that old), you typically suffered from burning, painful, bright-red vampire eyes. It's horrible.
• The sun is deadly. Oh yeah, you may look great as a deeply-tanned 15 year old, but a large percentage of us have had to undergo skin cancer surgery as we got older. Others heavy tanners end up with inelastic faces resembling alligator handbags. It can be hideous.
• Swimming is considered a "minor" sport. In high school, the only reason any cheerleaders came to any of our swim meets is that their charter required them to. If they didn't attend at least one "minor" sport event each season, they'd have to turn in their pom-poms. And never, under any circumstances would a cheerleader ever date one of us. (Of course, none of the other girls would date us either, but that's a different story. Sigh.)
• The gay guys might occasionally grope you when executing a flip turn. -- OK, this one might not bother some people, but it tended to make me a bit nervous.
• There's not much future in swimming. There are only a handful of people in the entire world who can actually make a living from being a swimmer. There's more money in almost any other sport; did you know that Kiki Vandeweghe was a world-record-holding swimmer before deciding to go into basketball? We even had a kid on the Wichita Swim Club (Chris Bogue) who was a national record holder in the 100 freestyle, but gave up swimming in order to go play football. In Wyoming. Geez!

So why would anyone want to become a swimmer? Well, there is the fact that the water supports you, so you're basically lying down the entire time you're exercising. That's good. And though I personally have never done it, I've heard that some people just pee in the pool whenever they need to go, rather than having to excuse themselves to the locker room -- what other sport has that feature? But the most compelling reason to become a swimmer can be summed up in four short words:

Girls in swim suits.

Girls with great bodies in swim suits. Spending the majority of your day hanging around with highly-fit women clad in a few scant ounces of nylon and lycra -- it does have its appeal.

Ahhh.

Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah. The appeals of swimming. Specifically, Becky Love.

When Becky was 10, she held national swimming records in several events. Her brothers were also excellent swimmers and their father, Bob Love, was a huge supporter of their participation. His company, the Love Box Company, became a major sponsor of the Wichita Swim Club, eventually being recognized when the spectacular new facility was christened as the "Love Aquatic Center" in the mid-1970s. Becky was older than me, though, so I never had the pleasure of swimming with her.

But she did become my coach for a while. What a blissful time that was!

You see, Becky was not only an outstanding athlete, but also a charming and attractive woman, with a gorgeous smile and a killer sense of humor. I was in high school (perhaps a freshman in college), and Becky was enough older to have the allure of wisdom and experience, but still young enough (and single enough) to allow us boys to fantasize that she might actually see us as "men".

We swam really hard, trying to impress her. We asked lots of questions about swimming technique, just to prolong our conversations with her. We dreamed of swimming to victory in the championship meet, just in the hope of getting a hug from our adorable coach as a show of congratulations.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Not long after I joined the swim team, Becky ended up moving to Arkansas, marrying some southern stud-muffin, and took over running one of the box company manufacturing plants. To this day, whenever I go box shopping, I always look for the Love Box brand name, and always think of my dear, foxy coach.

And there's one other thing I remember...

While Becky was an absolute sweetheart in all outward appearances, her creativity as a coach unwittingly revealed that she must have indeed had a dark side. A very dark side indeed. Her technique might have been effective from a stroke modification standpoint, but...ouch!

Here was Becky's torture technique: If a swimmer had a tendency to bend his or her elbows too much (at least in Becky's judgment), she would flash an evil grin, disappear into the murky depths of the coach's office, and re-emerge carrying a pencil and a roll of duct tape. The pencil was sharpened to a needle point -- on both ends -- and then duct taped across the inner bend of the offending swimmer's arm. If the elbow bent further than Becky thought appropriate, twin points of graphite would stab into his forearm and bicep, causing bloody puncture wounds with chunks of graphite floating around them.

It hurt like hell. But it did tend to teach you to straighten your arms. And guess what? You could do the same thing on the backside of your knees to fix a too-floppy kick. (Shudder!)

The training effectiveness of this category remains under dispute to this day. (It's especially suspect since the straight-arm butterfly technique has long since fallen out of favor.) But no one can accuse Becky of failing to make an impression on the swimmers who have ever tried this torturous technique. Or on swimmers who ever noticed how cute she was. Or both.

Perhaps Becky's coaching was one of the influences that led me into coaching as I got older. Perhaps not. I can honestly say that I've never actually tried to get anybody to try the double-pointed-pencil drill to straighten out their arms. But it makes a great threat...

Thanks, Becky. I hope you're happy.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—The Dreaded "Trays" ~1973

As a teen-age athlete, you view your coach in several different ways. You look to your coach not only for instruction and direction in your sport, but also for inspiration, motivation, guidance, and even a significant amount of role-modeling. For a teen-age swimmer, the coach plays an important role in life, indeed; perhaps spending several more hours a day with the kid than his or her own parents do. If you like your coach, life is good and you pursue your athletic goals with vigor. If you don't like the coach, well, then life pretty much sucks.

(If your coach happens to be the gorgeous and appropriately-named Becky Love, you might also develop a total schoolboy lust-crush, but that is a different story entirely, and won't be discussed here.)

This story begins when I finally made the move from "Park Board" swimming into the AAU. The Park Board league was where everyone swam at their local summertime pool and competed to be the best in the neighborhood. The AAU (which has since been replaced by USA Swimming) was where you competed with the world. Park Board teams usually had high school kids coaching their teams; AAU clubs hired professional and experienced experts. AAU clubs had an enormously more structured and rigorous program. And they were much more expensive.

In Wichita, there were basically only two AAU teams that counted; the Wichita Swim Club (WSC) and the East Branch YMCA. While the East Branch Y had some quality coaches and some excellent swimmers, it was (and is) a generally accepted fact that WSC had the finest swimming program in Kansas.

Moving up from the Park Board, I really didn't care which team I joined. Either one would be a HUGE step up from the team I'd been on. But my buddies (Canaday, Odle, and Dillard) were members of WSC, so that's where I went.

The coach at the time was a gentleman named Doug Sidles. Doug was a great guy, and an excellent coach. We all enjoyed his sense of humor, his swimming expertise, his energy, and yes, even the fact that he worked our butts off. He became sort of a beloved surrogate father figure for many of us, and was one of the reasons we enjoyed our swimming experience so much.

Unfortunately, there was a scandal, and Doug ended up leaving the team. (By today's standards, it would probably be considered a minor scandal -- no one would need to leave the organization. Even at the time, most of the swimmers felt that Doug should have stayed. But it was not our decision. The coaching position was suddenly vacant.)

How do you replace a coach who was so well-liked by the team? At the time, many of us were not happy with the way it was handled, but in hindsight, they had found the perfect solution. They hired an "interim" coach, who was asked to get the team through the summer as the Board continued the search for the next "permanent" coach.

So who do you get? The obvious pool of available coaches was the group of local high-school swim team coaches. Only two of the schools had coaches that were considered to be appropriately knowledgeable about the sport; the others tended to be Driver's Ed instructors or Band Directors who needed the extra cash that coaching a "minor" sport could bring. (Our coach at West High would start each practice by saying "So, what do you guys think we should do?") Southeast High School was where most of the WSC kids would attend, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to hire their coach. The only other knowledgable coach was John Deardorf, who coached at South High.

We hated John Deardorf.

Why? Because we hated South High, and anything associated with it. We hated Deardorf particularly because he was so enthusiastic on the pool deck, and because he worked so hard to inspire his swimmers. Of course, the South High guys loved him, but we thought he was just obnoxious.

And besides, he was from South. Ewww!

Now, before I continue with the story of how badly we hated Mr. Deardorf, I must set the record straight. After I actually got to know him, I came to have tremendous respect for him, and learned that he was a great guy. A very likeable man, with a great deal of character and talent.

But at the time...

Everyone had loved Doug Sidles, so anyone who walked in as his replacement was bound to be treated as a vile interloper. We may not have been able to grow whiskers or vote yet, but we could still be mean and obnoxious to outsiders. We did not make it easy on poor John.

In retrospect, he must have understood that part of his job description was to endure the animosity of the swimmers; to get the bile out of our systems so that the "permanent" coach would be accepted and welcomed the following fall. What a monumentally tough thing to ask someone to do, but Deardorf charged right in and took the reins. And he found a unique and terrible tool with which to work this much-needed transformation: the dreaded TRAY.

What is a Tray, you ask? Well, it's no secret that increasing resistance during training results in an increase in the athlete's strength. Heck, that's the whole idea behind weightlifting. It makes sense. So some brilliant engineer decided to create a device that would help swimmers feel more resistance during swim practices. The Tray was the result.

Imagine a piece of sheet stainless steel, about 10 inches wide and 16 inches long. Fold it into an "L" shape, string a belt across it and strap it onto your torso in a way that makes an 8 x 10 inch segment of steel project outward from your belly button. When swimming, it becomes a sort of transverse shark fin on your underside. It creates resistance. It also totally screws up your stroke, your body position, and your ability to practice the movements you'd use in competition. But it does create resistance.

The only other thing that would cause as much damage to your stroke would be to swim lots and lots of distance butterfly. Once your arms die (which happens very quickly with butterfly), you simply end up teaching your body how to do the stroke incorrectly. You make all sorts of adjustments that do NOT help your racing form, but when you're that tired, it's the only way to survive.

So John had us do distance butterfly with the Trays on. 800 butterfly with Trays. 10 x 200 butterfly with Trays. No-breather butterfly with Trays. Let's just see how far you can go...butterfly with Trays.

I'm pretty sure the team was unanimous in wanting to see how many trays could be stuffed into the coach's esophagus.

Oh, don't misunderstand...we did plenty of butterfly without the trays, too. Plenty of stroke-ruining, brain-cell-destroying, oh-God-please-kill-me-now, #$@%*&! butterfly. Oh yeah, we got physically stronger due to all this resistance training, but I'm sure that more than a few of us have paid a lot of good money to a gaggle of psychotherapists to help us recover from the emotional scars that the #$@*&! trays left upon our fragile teen-age mindsets.

[Deep cleansing breath. OK, I'm better now.]

After that dreadful summer, Bill Spahn came in to take over. When Bill said that we were no longer going to use the trays, there was much rejoicing. And when Deardorf left, he took any remnants of our anger over Doug's departure with him. We loved Bill, without reservation, and the team prospered magnificently under his leadership.

And John Deardorf made it possible. Thank you John. We owe you.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Creative Laziness ~1974

We thought we were getting away with murder.

Though the swimmers knew that Coach Spahn was an intelligent guy, we really believed that we could fool him at will. We thought that we were so stealthy and clever that he’d never catch on.

(Many years later when I became a swim coach myself, it finally became obvious to me that Spahn hadn’t been fooled for a second. He was letting us get away with stuff. We thought that the other end of the pool was far enough away to be outside his optical range, but believe me, from anywhere on the pool deck the coach can see everything!) But… an important component of leadership is the ability to know when to crack down, and when to look the other way. Spahn consistently showed such leadership skills.

Either that or he really did need to gulp down that giant cup of coffee every morning before his eyes became functional. I guess we’ll have to ask him.

Anyway, here’s a partial list of the transgressions we thought were going undetected:

The Hose

Rick Hall was one of the popular swimmers, probably due to his enthusiastic desire to embrace anything new and “hip”. We called him “The Trucker”, which was a reference to his immersion in cultural phenomena (see Dead, Grateful), not a reference to any particular vehicle-handling skills. In fact, he drove an Olds Cutlass, not a truck, but even so, riding with him was usually a white-knuckle experience. Everyone loved the Trucker, but I doubt anyone would ever hand him the keys to anything bigger than a station wagon.

The Trucker was a sprinter; he liked swimming short distances. Oh, he was certainly able to compete in longer events like the 200 butterfly, but he didn’t enjoy it. Nor did he relish doing long sets during workout. Unfortunately, Coach Spahn fervently believed in the value of long sets, and assigned them on a regular basis. Solution? The hose.

Trucker chopped up an old garden hose into sections about 18 inches long. He only shared them with a few special friends; folks he knew could appreciate the benefits of avoiding distance sets (i.e., the lazy guys). He explained how they worked: “Dude, you just put the hose on the bottom at the far end of the pool during warmup. Then when you get tired, man, just pick it up off the bottom. It’s so far out, man…you can stay underwater and breathe through it. Whoa…Righteous!”

So for the next few weeks, guys would disappear for a while during tedious sets. Well, OK, they didn’t really disappear – you could see a dark blob underwater, spouting a short section of green hose that was incongruously poking up into the air next to the lane rope at the far end of the pool. Mickey (the Fat Man) would take a turn, then Neugent, then Ulffers, and so on. If there was only one hose at a time, Spahn could never figure it out. Yeah, right.

Eventually, though, everyone discovered that it was actually hard work to suck air through a thin and smelly rubber hose while simultaneously fighting natural buoyancy and trying to avoid the swimmers who were actually doing the set. Choking was not uncommon, and getting kicked was a virtual certainty. Heck, it was easier to just swim the dang set.

The Trucker regretted the demise of his brilliant plan. “Man,” he said, “this is bringing me down. I’m bummin’, dudes.”

But there were alternatives:

Stationary Kicking

In the early days of the Wichita Swim Club, the organization was not able to afford the high-tech Styrofoam kickboards that you see at most facilities. Instead, some generous donor had provided the team with wooden kick boards made from big slabs of pine. They were much larger than the kickboards most swimmers use today, but were heavy to begin with. And the more they were used, the more waterlogged they became. Pushing one of these barges down the pool was just plain hard.

Solution? Just stay in the same place. I was a terrible kicker to begin with, so it didn’t take much for me to discover that with only a slight adjustment in the angle of my foot, I could kick my legs all day long without actually going anywhere. In fact, with some experimentation, I developed the ability to actually go backwards while appearing to be kicking in the normal fashion. I could generate a splash without creating momentum.

So, every time Spahn ordered a long kick set, I’d kick normally down to the far end of the pool, then vigorously paddle in place until everyone else had done the entire distance and it was time to head home. I’d end up traveling only two lengths of the pool while everyone else did 16 or 20.

Did I actually end up doing less work? I don’t know -- probably not. But sometimes, it’s just important for a teenager to feel that he’s getting away with something, I guess.

The Fence

One summer, Spahn decided that we needed to do massive amounts of distance swimming. Lots of 1500s (about a mile straight), scads of 800s, and even a significant amount of (gasp!) 3000s.

It took me about 45 minutes to swim a straight 3000. At the time, we deduced that either Spahn expected miraculous results from this über-training technique, or that he was a sadistic psychopath who couldn’t find enough cute little bunnies to torture and was therefore forced to take out his hostility on us. We all liked Spahn, so we assumed the former. (I’m not sure the jury ever actually returned with a verdict, though.)

(On second thought, it might be that he just wanted us to be occupied for 45 minutes, which would give him time to, oh, I don’t know…nap? I never thought of this before, but I do believe that there was a direct correspondence between the days Spahn didn’t have his big coffee cup and the days we did 3000s. Hmmm.)

The pool was surrounded by a nice, solid wooden fence. I’m not sure why a fence was needed here; it wasn’t preventing any unauthorized access to the pool (see “Dipping, Skinny”). It may have only been erected to provide a place to hang advertisements for the pool’s sponsor, the Love Box Company. In any case, it made a nice visual barrier when the need arose -- which it certainly did every time we were told to do one of those damn 3000s.

We’d swim a couple of hundred yards…just far enough to make sure that the coach was no longer paying close attention. Then it was a mad sprint to leap from the pool, charge to the fence and scramble over it. Then, for the rest of the set, you could sit behind the fence, keeping track through a knothole. Toward the end of the assigned distance, it was a simple matter to hop back over the fence and finish out the swim, making sure to act really, really tired at the end of the thing.

There were a few problems with this plan, though.
— One, the mad dash-and-climb effort itself was quite strenuous – and there was always the danger of splinters.
— Two, the far side of the fence was a field; there were scratchy plants and biting insects. You try strolling through a cornfield in nothing but a Speedo…
— Three, in addition to being mostly naked and barefoot, you’d be wet. If there was a breeze, it could get cold. And if you stayed out of the water long enough to dry, you had to deal with that whole chlorine-encrusted skin itch problem.

Yes, we did suffer for our pursuit of easy living. And Spahn just watched, sipped his coffee, and let us think we were clever.

Sadistic psychopath, indeed.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Clint Eastwood’s Influence ~1974

Like all teenagers, my friends and I were greatly influenced by the movies. For weeks after seeing “The Omega Man”, for example, we denounced anyone who disagreed with us as “eee-vill” in our best falsetto zombie-mutant voices. We referred to any desperate girl as a “Moneypenny” in our best Sean Connery accents. And I don’t even want to think how many unintentional bruises and muscle strains were the result of some member of our group momentarily forgetting that he was not actually Bruce Lee.

But the greatest cinematic influences on our swim team had to come from the work of Clint Eastwood. Of course, you’d expect kids to try to psyche out opponents by leaning over and growling cool action-hero lines such as “Do ya’ feel lucky, punk?” and “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Or “Make my day!” But you might not expect an Eastwood influence to manifest itself during the breaks between workout sets.

Our coach at the time was a gentleman named Bill Spahn. Despite being cursed with a surname reminiscent of something nasty that salmon do, Bill was well-respected and well-liked by the kids on the team. He’d stand on the deck and give instructions for the workout sets, and for the most part we’d pay courteous attention.

But sometimes a few swimmers would finish the set before the others were done. Or perhaps there was a built-in rest period to let us recover before launching into the next challenge. During those moments when we weren’t swimming and Spahn wasn’t talking, well, we had to do something to pass the time. Here’s where Clint comes in:

In “A Fistful of Dollars”, there’s a lovely scene where Clint politely asks a group of local hooligans to apologize to his mule. Being bad guys, of course they refuse, and begin to taunt him. A gunfight appears imminent – and poor Clint is outnumbered 6 to 1. Being a good guy, of course he cannot draw first – which provides an opportunity for some excellent camera work showing the squinty-eyed determination from these potential combatants. Then, inevitably, one of the bad guys reaches toward his holster…and the shooting starts.

Of course, our hero fires six shots almost instantaneously, neatly eliminating his foes before a single one of them can aim a shot in his direction. An impressive feat, indeed. And something that any moviegoing teenage boy would love to emulate.

Well, for some reason we were not allowed to bring loaded pistols into swim practice. And even though there were people on the team who were not very popular – perhaps even a bit obnoxious – none of them would stoop so low as to harass a defenseless mule and therefore did not deserve to be the subject of our target practice. We had to find substitutes.

We used the backstroke flags for bad guys.

Backstroke flags consist of a series of vinyl triangles hanging from a line that is suspended above the water a few yards from the pool end. When doing backstroke, a swimmer can see these flags as he passes underneath, and can thereby gauge how far he is from the wall in preparation for making a turn. They are a valuable swimming aid… but with the proper imagination, they can also be transformed into a bunch of ugly thugs who deserve a good plugging. And it just so happened that there were about 6 vinyl triangles per swimming lane. Perfect.

Instead of shooting bullets, we squirted water. By interlacing our fingers, cupping our hands, and pressing the palm heels together, we could create a water-holding reservoir inside our fists – about the size of a small egg. Then, by forcefully squeezing from the thumb toward the pinkie, we could force a stream of water to jet forth from the pinkie side of the hand. With enough practice, a swimmer could shoot a stream high enough and hard enough to splatter one of the triangles on the backstroke flags.

(Let’s be honest, if you could master that shot, you could also squirt some other unsuspecting swimmer in the eye with enough force to cause genuine pain. But such an offensive act would elicit retaliation, and was therefore dangerous. As Bruce Lee would say, “flags don’t squirt back”.)

Since the flags weren’t going to draw down on us, we set an arbitrary time limit for blasting all six flags: one and a half seconds. Every time there was a break between sets, you could hear someone quietly mumble “I’d like you fellas to apologize to my mule”. A short pause, and then spat-spat-spat-spat-spat-spat as another 6-flag injustice was righted by our erstwhile Eastwoods.

And that was about the extent of Clint’s influence on our team…until the release of “High Plains Drifter”.

“High Plains Drifter” is a morality tale, focusing on a mysterious stranger (Clint) who visits the small town of Lago. At first it appears that he has come to save them from an impending attack by revenge-hungry criminals. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the stranger has a darker agenda. The townspeople begin to discuss how to get rid of him.

Since the stranger is staying at the town’s only hotel, they decide to meet there to plot against him. Conspirators include the banker, the grocer, the town “good-time” girl, the hotel owner, the…huh? Wait a second – omigod! The hotel owner looks exactly like coach Spahn!

We couldn’t believe it! Here we were in a theatre, watching a real Hollywood movie feature, and our very own swim team coach is right up there on the silver screen, plotting to kill Clint Eastwood! Oh, man! This is SO cool!

(OK, it wasn’t really him, but the resemblance was uncanny.)

Um, back to the plot. So just how did our hotel owner/swim coach character plan to get rid of Clint, anyway? Well, he convinced a bunch of the townspeople to sneak into Clint’s hotel room after the unsuspecting cowboy had gone to sleep. They all carried baseball bats (wait, this was before Abner Doubleday – so let’s just say they were carrying sticks. Yeah, that’s it, sticks. Big sticks.) Surrounding the bed, they all raised their sticks up in the air and waited for the signal from the hotel owner.

“Welcome to Lago, you offspring of a female dog!*” he shouted, and the pounding commenced. Oh, it was brutal. I mean, these townspeople were whaling on the bed so hard, there is no possible way Clint could’ve survived.

…Unless, of course, he had previously prepared the old “two pillows under the covers look exactly like a sleeping man” trick, and was currently standing outside the window, lighting a stick of dynamite to toss into the room. Which he was.

Oops. Nasty club-wielding bed-whompers go boom. And Clint is off to torment the other townspeople. And as far as I know, our Bill Spahn look-alike actor never made another movie. (The coach himself did, though…he appeared as…what else? A hotel staffer – in “Dr. Thunderfinger is Forever”… but that’s another story.)

Anyway, the bed-pummeling scene was etched into our pliable young minds. So, for the next several years, it became very dangerous to be the last one asleep in a hotel room at a swim meet.

“Where’s Nyberg?” someone would ask. “Still asleep? Well, OK then, let’s welcome him to Lago.” And with that, we’d gather a half-dozen strapping young athletes and surround Nyberg’s bed armed with pillows, sleeping bags, and the occasional beach towel. “Welcome to Lago!” we’d shout, and then whale away.

Now, pillows may seem to be soft and cuddly things, but trust me, you DO NOT want to be welcomed to Lago. It can really hurt.

But that was years ago. It’s funny, though – I can still blast 6 backstroke flags in less than two seconds, and I continue to practice between workout sets. But I haven’t welcomed anyone to Lago in years and years. I no longer share motel rooms with other swimmers, so there aren’t really any opportunities.

But come to think of it, it’s sometimes a bit difficult to wake my teenage son in the mornings. Hmmm…now where’s that extra pillow?

*  This is not an exact quote, but this is a family column, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Swimmers and the Blind Man – Part 2 ~1974

WARNING: If you are offended by insensitivity and cruel attitudes from eras prior to the advent of Political Correctness, stop reading now. I’m sure none of the people involved in the following story would behave this way today – we’ve all gained maturity and wisdom (well, at least to some degree) – but back in 1974, we would sometimes behave like jerks. (Just like everybody else in the ‘70s.) Anyway, you’ve been warned.

What would you do if you had an unusable pool cue, a pair of sunglasses, and some paint that was left over from when you vandalized your high school? Of course — you’d pretend to be a blind man, right?

Well, OK, maybe that’s not what you would do, but it is what I did. Why? I dunno. I suppose you could get all Freudian about the symbolism of a guy who can’t get a date carrying around a 4-foot-long cane, or maybe attribute this behavior to a pitiable cry for attention by a geek who was not even noticed (“seen”) by the “cool” kids.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to do that Stevie Wonder head-wobbling thing in public. Who knows?

Anyway, I had this broken pool cue, and was determined to find a use for it. Being a former Boy Scout, of course I considered using it to create fire. It was good wood – ought to burn well – but…well, I could burn all sorts of other stuff. This was a very straight stick. It just seemed a shame to treat it like some gnarly old twig.

Whatever the motivation, I ended up sawing the broken part off the end of the cue, and then covering the whole thing with white paint. After it dried, I “borrowed” some of my sister’s red nail polish and created a glossy and alluring red tip for what I was now thinking of as my “cane”. I knew that I could go to the library and perform some research on the proper length of the red section; but I also knew that being nabbed by the “cane painting police” was far less likely than having my disguise penetrated because of the fact that I could, well, see. So I just slopped on the nail polish until I thought it looked good. “Looks good,” I said to myself, and laid it aside to dry.

The Wichita Swim Club was taking a bus trip to a swim meet in Omaha that weekend. I took my new cane along with no particular agenda in mind, other than to show the guys what I’d done with the damaged pool cue. But when you put a bunch of scheming deviant swimmers on a bus with nothing to do for hours, well, ideas get bounced around. At some point, the ideas congeal into a full-blown plot. My fellow conspirators and I would use the cane to see how badly we could dupe the local Omahanians. (Omaha-ians? Omygoshicans? What do you call them? Cornhuskers? I don’t think I even want to know what that means…)

Every time the bus stopped, I’d put on the sunglasses, grab the cane, and proceed to wander around the bus stop bumping into things. With one of the other kids acting as my well-intentioned but incompetent “guide”, I’d be led into knocking over store displays, entering women’s restrooms, and tumbling down flights of stairs.

I found it amazing that I could walk up to a stranger, whack them in the ankle with a pool cue, and they would apologize. And to this particular group of immature Kansas teenagers, such cruelty seemed to represent the pinnacle of humor.

That evening, the team went to the local buffet steakhouse for dinner. This presented a bit of a challenge for me for two reasons: One, it’s hard to carry a buffet tray while holding your guide’s elbow in one hand and a cane in the other. And, two, when you wear sunglasses at night, well… it’s really dark.

In other words, I was starting to understand how really crappy it would be to actually be blind.

Still, I had an audience with rather high expectations. And since the entire team was watching my every move, well, the show must go on.

I ended up tucking the cane under an armpit, and following Bruce VanBebber through the food line.

The hair-netted buffet attendant was happy to read the entire menu to me, describing each dish in detail. He didn’t know it, of course, but I could see the agony on his face as he tried to find words to make the rubbery-looking macaroni sound delicious and the brick-like carrot cake sound edible. He got stuck for a moment when he said “THIS is a large drink, and THIS is a medium,” before he realized that a sightless person would have no clue which cup he was indicating. I gave him the raised Spock eyebrow, and he changed his description. “Uh,” he said, “the large cup is pretty big and the medium cup is, uh, medium.” I nodded my understanding, and ordered a large Dr. Pepper.

(Side thought: is the "arched eyebrow" an instinctive expression of incredulity, or is it a learned behavior that would only be exhibited by sighted Star Trek fans? I’ll have to do some research.)

Once my tray was loaded, I held VanBebber’s upper arm and let him guide me to a table. He wasn’t paying much attention to the route we took, so I hoped that no spectators noticed that I neatly stepped around a couple of floor-level obstacles that I wasn’t supposed to be able to see. But then he led me into a situation where I needed to make a quick decision; either smack my tray into the back of Vickie Ingham’s head, or swerve to avoid her and reveal my deception.

I hope it didn’t hurt her too badly.

She did end up with a little bit of chocolate pudding in her hair, but she was an amazingly good sport about it. I managed to get seated without further incident.

I actually closed my eyes to eat, and found that it was possible to feed myself without looking at my food. It does change the dining experience, though – you should try it sometime.

“Oh, no,” somebody groaned, and I instinctively looked up. Sure enough, here came trouble. A couple of swimmers from the Topeka team were moving toward our table. And if being from Topeka weren’t bad enough, the group included the dreaded Ian Simpson.

I didn’t know him personally, but Ian Simpson had a reputation. He was huge and muscular, an incredibly fast swimmer, and he had a habit of false-starting in every single race. He didn’t talk much with his competitors, and he usually won every event he swam. Therefore, we assumed that he was a cocky and conceited jerk.

He sat down right across the table from me. Apparently he not only knew my name, but he also knew that my cane was a pool cue and my sightlessness was a sham. “Hi, Terry,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Then, as if immediately realizing that a blind guy might be sensitive to the word “see”, he apologized. “Sorry. I meant it’s good to, uh, sit with you.” And it went downhill from there.

“How did you guys handle the starting blocks today?” he asked the group. “Every time I got up there, the sun was in my eyes.” Pause. “Oh, sorry Terry.”

“I need to find out what heat I’m in for the 100 fly. Can I look at the heat sheet? Sorry Terry.” “We put our sleeping bags and stuff right next to the concession stand; it’s a great camp site. Sorry Terry.” “I’m gonna get more shrimp; I love sea food. Sorry.” “I think my brother is on the ‘C’ relay. Oops, sorry.” “Who’s on the ‘A’ relay? I am…sorry.” (Took me a while to understand that one. I/eye, get it?)

And it went on and on. Before the meal was over, Ian had uttered every conceivable variant on the theme of insensitivity. And his audience ate it up. The guy we had thought was nothing more than a muscle-bound aquatic automaton turned out to be quite the entertainer. Several strong inter-team friendships were formed that night thanks to Ian’s unfortunate treatment of Terry the blind man. While we still hated the town of Topeka, we no longer detested their swimmers.

So you could say that by cruelly mocking the misfortunes of others, I was able to become a catalyst for positive human growth and interaction. Or not.

As for the converted pool cue, well, it got safely tucked away under the seats of the bus for the remainder of the trip. From then on I only wore sunglasses when it was too bright outside. As a team, we swam pretty well, and our newly formed friendships with our northern-Kansas counterparts enabled us to direct our animosity in the proper direction – toward the damn Nebraskans. It was a good trip.

For the next few months, I continued to use my blind man’s cane, but only as it was meant to be used…as an air guitar. The only other time it appeared in public was when I took it on a camping trip shortly after I moved to Colorado.

It burned real good.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Swimmers and the Blind Man – Part 1 ~1974

Our story begins in the living room of the Smith family. Duane and Pat Smith (or DuaneR and Pitter Pat, as they were known to the swimmers) were the most generous and friendly folks imaginable. Everyone from the entire Wichita Swim Club was automatically considered to be a member of the Smith family, and was welcome to drop by and hang out any time. And if this openness and kindness weren’t enough, well, they had a bitchin’ stereo system and a pool table.

Hey, if we weren’t in the swimming pool working out, chances were good that we were over at the Smith’s, playing 8-ball and listening to the tunes.

I’d imagine that most kids who spent so many hours with a pool cue in their hand would eventually begin to take the game seriously; learning about physics – you know, angles, momentum, spin, and how energy is transferred during a collision. But we didn’t. There really wasn’t any point in it. First of all, we were swimmers, so we already had a venue of expertise. And second, it didn’t matter how skilled you were, because Daniel Smith was always going to cheat, anyway.

Daniel was a con man. He sold contraband at school (fireworks, fake IDs, and the one thing that really torqued off the school officials, cinnamon toothpicks). His oft-quoted ambition was to eventually leverage his extra-curricular experience into a lucrative career…in the Mafia. I won’t go into details here; further description of Daniel’s experiences as a “legitimate businessman” will be explored in other chapters. But what’s important to this story is that Daniel proclaimed himself to be the designated authority on the rules pertaining to conduct around the pool table.

If Daniel found himself stuck with a difficult shot, he’d move the cue ball to a more agreeable position and explain the maneuver by proclaiming “House Rules”. If an opponent was looking at an easy shot, Daniel would again cite “House Rules” and move the cue ball to a less advantageous spot. Since the walls of the room were fairly close to the table, it was not unusual to hear Daniel say, “House Rules allow me to climb up on the table”, or if it was YOUR shot, he’d say “House Rules prohibit climbing on the table, you quaester!”

“But YOU just climbed on the table…”, you’d say.

“Of course I did,” Daniel would respond. “I was on the NORTH side of the room. It’s in the House Rules.”

(By the way, the word “quaester” – pronounced “kwee'-ster” – was something he picked up in his World History class. Even though he didn’t expect to need to use any “book-learnin’” in his future career as an extortionist and racketeer, he did pay enough attention to latch on to any words that sounded like some sort of insult, and were esoteric enough to confuse his victims. We were all called “queaters” for quite some time. He later moved on to the use of “dust bunny”, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, depending on which direction the wind was blowing, or what color your socks were, or how many days it had been since your last haircut, there was sure to be a House Rule that would ensure your defeat at the pool table. Therefore, the games took on secondary importance – we were really there to listen to the music.

DuaneR (Daniel’s dad) had purchased a state-of-the-art “Bang & Olofson” stereo system, with speakers the size of a Volkswagen. (Hmm, is it possible that teenage boys would try to make jokes out of the initials “B&O”? Do ya think?) It sounded SO sweet, and it was SO loud that you just couldn’t help yourself – you had to move to the beat.

(Another side note: For some reason, Daniel’s older brother Doug was under the impression that turning up the “bass” knob would somehow “suck the bass right out of the record”. If you turned the bass up just one time, it would deplete the vinyl disc’s ability to ever reproduce those bass lines again. Therefore, if Doug was around, we tended to only hear the treble parts. But it still sounded great!)

So… if you had a pool cue in your hand, the music was awesome, and Daniel was running the table with help from his imaginary rule book – well, you really couldn’t help yourself; you played the cue as if it were a guitar.

Yes, this was before the term “air guitar” came into existence. The originators of the concept (us!) called it “playing cue”. We’d jump, strum, spin, and grimace-on-the-high-notes, just like the real rock stars. And if Hendrix was on the B&O, we might even play the cue with our teeth, or behind the back. There was some serious style being cranked out in the Smith’s living room.

Our favorites were the Blue Öyster Cult, Alice Cooper, Cat Stevens, and of course, Jimi. But believe it or not, we even saw some wicked Elton John piano parts interpreted for cue – I’m telling you, this was a talented group.

And then came the accident. While the closeness of the walls worked in Daniel’s favor in developing advantageous rules, it wasn’t really a benefit to the wide-open, frenzied actions of your typical world-class musical cue player. A cue-to-wall collision was inevitable.

I don’t really remember who did it, but since most undesirable events were eventually blamed on Nyberg, we’ll just stick with what works. So, here we were, right in the middle of the part where BÖC’s “ME-262” transitioned into a reprise of “Buck’s Boogie”, when we hear a loud crack as Nyberg’s cue smacked up against the wall.

“I knew it!” Doug shouted upon hearing the noise. “We sucked the bass out!” He immediately ran over and turned off the stereo. Suddenly, all you could hear was the ragged breathing of the cue-players as they panted from exertion.

“Uh, no, Doug,” said Nyberg. “I think it was my cue.”

“You gotta buy a new one,” Daniel said. “House…”

“Shut up, Daniel,” I said. “Now that it’s already broken, we’ve got nothing to lose by using it upside your head.” I took the cue from Nyberg and waved it threateningly.

“Actually,” I said, looking at the cue, “it’s not that bad. Just broke the tip off. We could probably repair this before DuaneR gets home and has a cow.” Instantly, as all good teams will do, we became a force united with a single thought – how are we going to cover up the accident?

The bad news is that we weren’t able to repair it. The good news is that DuaneR really hadn’t been paying attention to how many cues there were in the house, and never even missed it. It seemed a shame to throw it away, so I took it home and tried to think of something useful to do with it.

Thus begins the story of how I became a blind man for a weekend.

Stay tuned.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

My Gorgeous Spanish Teacher ~1974

Hey, even Beaver Cleaver once had a crush on his teacher; don’t tell me it never happened to you.

My biggest teacher crush came in my “Advanced Spanish Composition” class* in college. I wasn’t particularly interested in writing novels and essays en Español, but I figured that such a class would be easier than, oh, say, Organic Chemistry or something, so I signed up. I knew that I’d made the right decision when the teacher walked in. Wow!

Her name was Ana María, and she was beautiful. She had the smoothest bronze-colored skin I’d ever seen, and the silky hair tumbling about her face seemed to exert an almost magnetic pull on me. Looking into her huge brown eyes made the rest of the world fade from existence, and her lips promised a sweetness beyond anything I’d ever experienced.

And if those features weren’t enough, her body was the type that made chiropractors rich from all the heads snapping around when she walked through a room.

It was as if all my adolescent fantasies had come to life…but, (deep breath)…no – she was WAY out of my league. Hey, at that point in my life I wasn’t even confident enough to pursue the hygiene-impaired chicks who constantly mumbled curse words through their clenched and crooked yellow teeth as they rummaged through garbage cans, looking for discarded socks. No, if it wasn’t enough that Ana María was one of the beauty elite, she was also a teacher, and she was totally older than me; probably as ancient as 22 or 23.

I knew that I’d have to be content with the blessed opportunity to attend her classes a couple of times a week and gaze longingly upon her loveliness from my chair in the back of the room.

But wait a minute…it turns out that she just that day got off an airplane from Argentina. She’d never visited the USA before, and (maybe there’s hope) she doesn’t speak a single word of English! In our very first class, she confessed (in Spanish, naturally) that she was facing a bit of a challenge; being new in the country, having no friends, and not having a clue how to talk with anyone other than her advanced Spanish students.

Now, I’m the first to admit that at that time I had no experience in dealing with women. Heck, it was rare that I even talked with a female…but I was at least literate enough to recognize an opportunity for chivalry when it was thrust in my face. “Have no fear, teacher dear,” I said. “I’ll help you get acclimated!”

She smiled and said, “¿Qué?”

Well, whaddaya expect? She couldn’t understand English. Geez.

Anyway, after several attempts (frequently interrupted with her corrections of my amateurish Spanish grammar), I was finally able to get the point across. She actually seemed happy to know that she could call on me to help her settle in and become comfortable in her new land.

Over the next several weeks, we ended up spending quite a bit of time together. We went shopping, talked on the phone, and sampled the local restaurants. Her favorite was IHOP, though it took repeated attempts on my part to explain that in America, we don’t have to pronounce every vowel. She kept ordering “pan-kay-kees” and a nice pulpy glass of fresh-squeezed “or-anj-hee joo-ees-uh”.

During the course of our conversations, I learned a lot about my Argentina goddess. She seemed to genuinely like me, and one day when we were talking about movies, she really got my heart pounding. She casually mentioned that her favorite actor was Richard Boone – because she liked ugly guys. “Damn!” I thought. “I’m perfect for her!”

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say I fell in love, but there was definitely some serious hormonal action going on. I was moving slowly, of course, because I really didn’t know how to move at all – but I felt that I was making progress. When she told me how much she enjoyed the romantic music of “Raphael”, well, I created a plan to really kick start the romance.

I did a little research, and found out that this Raphael fellow was a HUGE star in Europe and South America. He was sometimes referred to as “The Spanish Elvis”, and was one of those steamy love-song kind of guys who always had panties and room keys thrown at him on stage. (That sounds kinda sexy, but seriously, would you want to get hit in the face with pointy metal objects, much less someone’s used underwear? I doubt it.) It took a while, but I was finally able to find one of his records in the cut-out (severe discount) bin at the local drug store.

The plan was to pick her up at her sorority house, take her back to my apartment for an evening of candlelight, wine, and romantic, panty-throwing music. Of course, I had to figure out a way to get rid of my obnoxious roommate, and I’d have to buy some candles. As a college boy from Kansas, I naturally had cans of Sterno, road flares, and a couple of gallons of Coleman Fuel, but those weren’t the right types of flammables. I may have even had a Roman candle or two, but she was from Argentina, so those wouldn’t work.

My roommate, Mickey, was continually taunting me for not being able to date any American girls, and was actually quite creative in his quest for new and powerful ethnic insults to hurl at me because of my Latin obsession. But when I pointed out that HE wasn’t dating anyone, and promised that I’d tell him all the romantic details, he agreed to disappear for the evening. The stage was set.

Her sorority was apparently the female equivalent of Delta House. Upon my arrival, I noticed that all of the girls seemed to be encumbered by afflictions that would keep them out of all the uppity sororities – you know, things like baldness, leprosy, resemblance to Dom DeLuise, etc. And being unable to speak English.

The house actually had a Front Desk, staffed by a stern, shampoo-challenged receptionist. “I’m here to see Ana María,” I said. “Could you please direct me to her room?”

She looked at me as if I’d asked if I could cook and eat her favorite puppy. “Certainly NOT!” she said. “We don’t allow boys in our rooms.” She shuddered at the thought, and then continued in a snotty tone. “I’ll let her know that you’re here.”

“Hmmm,” I thought, “this severe non-fraternization attitude may indicate possible reluctance toward my visions of a naked candlelight Raphael romp.” I knew now that I’d have to be extra-suave to implement my seductive plans. I started practicing my best Richard Boone smile.

As usual, Ana María was radiant. She impressed me even more by speaking English as she greeted me. “We go for pan-kay-kees, yes?”

No, I wanted to explain – we go for smooching and fondling. Yes. Yes. Yes!

Sigh. You know what happened, though, don’t you? We ended up at IHOP, and by asking questions about the sorority, I quickly learned that she was fully supportive of the “no-boys rule”. I could spend time with her, and she’d teach me all the Spanish I wanted, but…there weren’t enough Raphael records in the world to deliver me to the promised land of hanky panky with her.

Sigh.

The bad news is that even after the class was over and I quit spending time with her, Mickey still continued to make fun of my futile attempt to woo my Argentinean teacher. Even to the present day, he’ll occasionally bring it up, the jerk.

The good news is that I still sometimes get nostalgic and throw my old Raphael record on the turntable. He really is a very powerful and emotional singer – why else would I get those tears in my eyes whenever I listen, right?

Buenos noches, amigos.
Terry

*Addendum:

The only memory I’ve retained about the Spanish Composition class is about the “magazine article review” assignment. We were supposed to read an article in an English-language magazine, and then write a synopsis/analysis of it in Spanish. Well, it seemed like too much trouble to actually go find a magazine somewhere, and I figured she was still pretty new to the country – so I thought I could probably get away with simply making something up.

I decided to write about a mythical article that I’d read in the imaginary “Inventions of Applied Science” magazine. It was about the invention of the proverbial better mousetrap. Not a bad idea, huh?

The problem was that by the time I was finished, I had endowed my mythical mousetrap with motion-sensor technology capable of discriminating between mice and other (desirable) household pets, as well as the ability to fry the offending rodent with a miniature laser beam. The zap only lasted 3.4 milliseconds, meaning that the device was also environmentally friendly with its low energy consumption.

Once the little mousy corpse had cooled, the trap used a remote manipulator arm to retrieve its victim and to stuff it in the “decomposition chamber”. The chamber (I wrote) could hold up to a dozen expired mice, and would process them all into a single odor-free bio-pellet that could then be used to fertilize one’s garden. Good stuff, eh?

I was having so much fun envisioning all the Rube Goldberginess I could cram into the dang thing that I forgot what the original assignment was. By the time I remembered that she was expecting a review of a real article, it was too late to come up with anything new. I finished my hasty translation mere moments before it was time to rush off to class and hand it in. I was sure I’d be busted for plagiarism. (No, wait. Plagiarism is stealing from someone else. This was original. So what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah – lying. That’s it.)

Epilog: I didn’t get busted. In fact, she gave me an “A” on that assignment. There was a moment of panic when she said she’d like to read the article, and maybe even buy one of those funky traps…but I thought fast and told her that my roommate had accidentally burned the magazine during an experiment for his Chemistry class. Anyway, the close call had taught me a lesson, and I never ever again cheated on a school assignment.

Well, almost never.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Motel Shenanigans – Part 2 ~1975

When you’re a teenager, you don’t really worry too much about how much sleep you get. You can stay up late at night without worrying about next-day consequences. Hey, if you fall asleep in the middle of the day, what’re ya gonna miss? Part of an Algebra class? Who cares? Government studies? Ha! I laugh at your society’s pitiful attempts to educate me. BWAH Haa ha ha zzzzzzzzz.

But while normal students can party all night (or more likely in MY peer group, watch TV, or even [choke] study), teenage swimmers at an out-of-town meet are abnormally concerned with getting enough rest. For a competitive athlete, it’s important to be able to wake up early enough to perform all the necessary rituals before the designated warm-up time. Back then, in pre-Atkins days, our preparation included having a giant carbo-loading breakfast (typically pancakes with lots of syrup), followed by some warm-up stretching, touch-up leg shaving (for championship meets only), and finally, the all-important visit to the locker room toilet to dump as much of remnants of the pancake breakfast as possible. (Some guys put more energy into purging their bowels than they did in their races, but let’s not go there, OK?)

Anyway, at the end of the day when we finished up with bed-bouncing competitions, harassing other motel guests, and sneaking into potentially revealing drive-in vampire movies, we actually did look forward to getting some restful sleep. I don’t know whether various political correctness movements have changed this or not, but when I was a teen, we had to share a motel bed with one of the other boys. Some guys talked in their sleep, some kicked, or stole covers, and some took great pride in the audio volume and olfactory stench they could generate with their incredible flatulence. So... there were enough challenges to getting a good night’s sleep without a bunch of drunken partiers in the room down the hall.

Yep, that’s right…one of our meets coincided with some sort of lodge convention. I’m not sure exactly who these guys were, but they wore those funny purple Moroccan upside-down-bucket hats with tassels. They drank heavily and laughed heartily. Even from within our room, we could hear their portable stereo playing “Music to Strip By”, while some guy shouted lame farmer’s daughter jokes over the music. And since his compatriots were laughing at each joke, one had to assume that the general level of inebriation in the room was approaching critical.

We couldn’t sleep, and with some of our teammates’ penchant for making prank phone calls to the front desk, we didn’t expect to be taken seriously if we went through official channels. Nonetheless, action was required.

I’m sorry to say that my memory is a little fuzzy about those who participated in “Operation Silence the Drunks”, but I think the group included Nyberg, Jackson, and my brother, the Ant. We quietly left our rooms and performed reconnaissance.

The partiers were in the last guest room at the end of the hallway. Beyond that was only the motel storage and laundry room. It was a long way back to the next corridor, so once we got down to the target room, we’d be highly exposed for the entire time it took to run back to the hallway intersection. We were leaning toward smearing something on the doorknob – hopefully some leftover glop from someone’s room-service tray. Or maybe trying to rig the door with some sort of booby trap. Closer investigation was needed.

But before we stood directly in front of their room for any period of time, we thought it would be a good idea to increase our escape options. If the storage room was unlocked, we could possibly hide in there if anything went wrong.

Sure enough, the storage room door opened with only a little persuasion from a credit-card against the bolt. And once that door was opened, our plans became complete in an instant.

The storage room was full of old mattresses. Perfect. Thank you, God.

Now all we needed was a little bit of time. No one had passed through the party room door for some time now, and it sounded as if the party was still in crescendo mode. We huddled in the storage room, coordinated assignments, and even went through a bit of a dry run to practice our teamwork. Then it was time to move.

Two athletes were assigned to each mattress. Our loads were bulky and fairly heavy, but we were charged with adrenaline, and highly motivated. It took only 8 seconds to get the first mattress in place, completely covering the door to the party room. Assault Team Two had the next mattress propped up against the first a few seconds later. Then, a moment of panic…the door opened!

“Hey!” someone yelled from behind the mattress. “Whuzgononhere?” The sound was actually muffled pretty well by the dual mattresses, but the message was clear – we were in deep trouble if these guys got out before we could escape. Nyberg and I leaned against the mattress with all our strength, which for the moment was enough to overcome the occupants’ half-hearted efforts to push their way out. The other guys grabbed the next mattress, and then the next.

Before the partiers realized the extent of their predicament, we had stuffed enough mattresses in the hallway to fill all the space between the door and the opposite wall. It was a lot of work to wedge the last one in there, especially since we were giggling hysterically as we listened to the barrage of creative cursing coming from behind our barrier. But by the time we kicked the last mattress into place, it was clear that those fez-wearing inebriates were not going to be leaving that room without assistance from the outside.

Because the barrier was so snug, we felt secure in taking the time to taunt them for a bit. “You’re gonna ROT in there, you scumbags!” we yelled. And of course, being teenagers, we also had to say fiendishly clever things such as “You suck,” and “We’re smarter than you. Buttheads!”

Suddenly, though, the Ant stopped yelling and looked thoughtful. “What?” I asked him. “Um, I was just thinking... what if they’ve called the desk?”

The giggling stopped abruptly, and the running began. We tore down the hall, fumbling with room keys in the fading hope that we’d be able to duck into our room before the authorities arrived. Oh NO! We heard the elevator bell ding.

Tumbling through and slamming the room door behind us, we still weren’t sure whether we’d escaped unseen. The four of us huddled together with our ears against the door, trying very hard to breathe quietly while our hearts pounded away. “I heard a door slam,” a voice said. “Yeah, but which one?”

Whew! They’d probably eventually figure out what had happened, but they couldn’t prove anything. We began to relax.

Of course, we then had to stay up for quite a while to talk about what studly adventurers we were – thwarting the evil adults, and all that. We probably ended up getting less sleep than we would have if we’d have just put up with the party. But it was worth it.

The next day, the coach and the chaperones loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with the hoodlums who had so cruelly harassed those innocent conventioneers. There were a few times where a particularly steely adult gaze made me think that they somehow knew which of us were responsible…but no consequences were ever sanctioned.

But even with our eyelids feeling a little droopy that morning, and our prospects of swimming fast not looking too positive, well, those pancakes still tasted pretty good.

Have fun, my friends, but keep the noise down, OK?

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Motel Shenanigans – Part 1 ~1975

Road trips with the swim team were golden opportunities for kids in their late teens to experiment with their burgeoning sexuality, and to solidify their relationships with their teenage sweethearts. Oh, there were chaperones, all right, but there weren’t enough of them to keep an eye on us all the time, and besides, they were enjoying being away from home, as well.

I mean, they could have alcohol, you know? Now, I’m not saying that they did, but the theory does provide an explanation for why they didn’t spend much time watching over the rambunctious youth in their charge.

In any case, there were very few obstacles to prevent the kids from getting together in the motel rooms and engaging in all sorts of hanky panky.

Unfortunately, the one obstacle that did exist was a HUGE one – we were socially retarded nerds who were years away from getting a clue…about much of anything. The boys I hung around with presented no threat whatsoever to the virtue of the young ladies on the team.

(Sigh.)

And yet, we had the unbridled energy and enthusiasm of the youthful athletes that we were, so something had to give.

(Explanatory note: The era I’m describing pre-dated the omnipresence of Cable TV, and the invention of video games. Today’s youth would be likely to expend their extra energy in marathon sessions of GameBoy competition, or perhaps in fighting over the TV remote in bloody battles for channel-selector supremacy. But we had none of those options. Without cable, the only thing to do within the room during certain times of the evening would be to watch the News – and since that might accidentally be educational, we shunned it the way we would shun Oklahomans. When the News came on, we went out.)

One night, we were staying in a motel that was next to a Drive-In theatre. A bunch of us decided that it would be fun to sneak into the Drive-In and watch the movie. As I recall, the picture was “Blood of the Zombie” or “Zombie Bloodbath” or some damn thing – so it seemed likely that at some point during the evening there might be the opportunity to view one or more naked female breasts on the silver screen. (Hey, I said we were lacking social skills, not hormones.)

We gathered most of the regular gang, but knew that such an adventure required the participation of Roger Neugent. When Neugent joined an operation, well, interesting things just happened. I was selected to go get Roger.

It was around 9pm, and all the swimmers were supposed to be nestled in their rooms. The chaperones may have already been tucked in themselves…or they may have been down the street at the local bar – who knows? – All I know is that at that moment, they were not in the motel hallways dropping the iron fist of discipline on wayward, curfew-busting swimmers like myself.

I found Neugent’s room and banged on the door. I heard a muffled “Who is it?” from within. Hey, it’s Neugent, I thought; he’s used to being hassled by the Man – let’s have a little fun here. I banged again. Then, doing my best to sound mature and burly, I grunted “Hotel Security! Open up!”

“Just a minute.” I was already chuckling, anticipating Neugent’s grin when he saw it was only me and realizing that he hadn’t been busted for…well, whatever he happened to be feeling guilty about.

It took longer than I thought it should, but finally the door opened. There stood some old guy (probably 30) that I had never seen before. He was in his underwear, and behind him I could see a woman in the bed, looking anxiously toward the door while hugging the bedcovers up under her chin. Even with my nerdy naïveté, I instantly realized that I had interrupted a romantic encounter between two people I did not know. This was not Neugent’s room.

My eyes went wide and my heart started pounding. “Uh, sorry, wrong room,” I stammered, then turned and ran down the hall. I expected to be grabbed from behind and rightly pummeled for my unwarranted interruption of the couple’s private activity. And if I somehow managed to escape that, I expected to encounter the real hotel security force, complete with handcuffs, billy clubs, and a complete lack of respect for my Miranda rights.

In retrospect, I’m guessing that the poor guy I disturbed simply turned to his wife, grumbled something about disrespectful punks and the sad state of the youth in this country, then returned to his previous activity. Since the motel hallways did not echo with the expected “Red Alert” horn, and I did not see squadrons of badge-wearing enforcement drones searching down every stairwell and inside every ice machine, I assume that the guy didn’t even call the front desk to complain.

Either that, or they were like most other small-town Kansas motels that were next to vampire-movie drive-ins – where “Security” consisted of the same pimple-faced teenager who had the job of restocking the soda machines and using an old broom to chase away the stray cats who wanted to sleep under the housekeeping carts.

To be honest with you, though, I don’t even remember if we got around to sneaking into the movie. I was so traumatized by the incident that I don’t remember anything except looking over my shoulder as we left the motel the next morning; expecting to see my prank victim coming after me with an ax or a loaded ice bucket or something. I showed my face as little as possible, furtively ducking behind other swimmers until we could load up and drive away from the place.

(Of course, it didn’t help that all my buddies with whom I’d shared the story were taking great delight in shouting “Here he comes!” every time I started to relax a little. Sigh.)

The good news is that I overcame that trauma reasonably quickly. By the time the next out-of-town swim meet rolled around, I was ready for further authority-flouting adventures, which will follow shortly.

Get a good night’s rest, my friends.