For the past few months I have been going swimming once a week, its been going pretty well albeit a bit uneventful… Until this week, let me tell you a short story of the worst way to avoid someone.

The open swim was drawing to a close. With about 10 minutes left to run, the girls who were doing Aquafit afterwards started to walk into the area. Amongst these I spotted two girls I went to school with, girls that I didn’t really like and I’m pretty sure weren’t too keen on me. Anyway, because we’re all grown up now and supposedly ‘mature’, I find that you end up speaking to people from school even if you didn’t really know them. The socially awkward me wanted to avoid this at all costs. But oh no, I was at the far end of the pool and needed to get back.

The options available to me were thus:

1. Get out of the pool and walk back, bumping straight into them.
2. Swim back slowly (note: I HATE people watching me swim, I’m the guy that starts swimming when the lifeguard’s heads are turned… yes, it’s that bad!)
3. SWIM LIKE HELL!

Can you guess which option I picked? Yup, you’re correct, it was the latter. I swam back in a quasi-Olympic Swimmer manner, I got almost half way down the pool and was thinking to myself ‘hey, this is going pretty well, my asthma hasn’t kicked in, I haven’t swallowed and chocked on water and I’m maintaining a good speed’. Meanwhile my left leg was like LEG CRAMP MOTHER FUCKER!!! I came to a standstill as my muscle continued to pull… right in front of them, I didn’t look up. I continued to walk the rest of the way with my head down while in complete agony.

The moral of this story? It pays to be nice and just say a quick hello and get the hell out of there.