Does This Bathing Suit Make Me Look Trashy?

I swim once or twice per week at the local rec center.  The pool is clean and not too crowded.  I also swim when I visit my son up north.  The town pool there is new with wide lanes and a diving board. As a kid I used to love diving into the unknown waters at Idlewild Swim Club.  Unknown because that 'pool' was actually a large man-made lake with a sand bottom.  The diving pool had four boards.  Two low to the water, one at about three feet, and my favorite, the ten-foot board.  The waters would churn  from all the belly flops and back flips, and I had to trust that I would have a clear entry into the water. 

The rec center pool is shallow from end to end with a slightly deeper depth in the middle.  It is not a diving pool; it is a strict lap pool.  The diving board up north is only open to the swim team, and the blocks are folded up during lap swimming.  Occasionally, I will go headfirst into the pool at my condo complex, but it is more an outward reach than a deep plunge.  I don't want to become a statistic of poor judgement.

Nowadays my swimming is a full-on apparatus experience.  I wear a unitard type suit, nose and ear plugs, goggles and a bathing cap.  I don't bother with fins, pull buoys or hand paddles. I just go in, go slow and keep going until my body says enough.  I practice some water yoga after laps, treat myself to the hot tub and call it a day.  All of this gear, plus two towels, toiletries and a change of clothes requires me to bring two bags to the gym on swim days.  One for all my dry stuff and another for the soon to be wet stuff.

I don't know if it stems from being a mother, bygone girl scout leader, ex soccer mom, former event planner or maybe just neurosis, but I like to prepare.  For me that means lining up all the bags for the pool, letters to drop at the post office, papers to be notarized, by my front door.  Not enough to trip over in an emergency, just enough to not forgot anything in the morning.  Yesterday I took the reusable bag I use for recyclables and put that by the door as well.  Add two water bottles, my purse, a pair of sunglasses - I am good to go.

Everything got piled on the front seat, save for the bag to shake out into the large bin of recyclables.  Usually, I walk to the bins to do this, but oh no!  Not yesterday.  I put the bag of bottles and newspapers on the floor of the passenger seat and drove over to the little hut that holds all the secrets of the complex where I live.  You know, trash and recycling.  There was a car parked at an odd angle, kind of not too far forward, and not too far back and he messed up my mojo of jumping out, dumping out and getting going.  I was so concerned about where I was going to pull up, that when I exited my car, I wasn't paying close attention.  As usual, the two recycling bins were nearing capacity, what with people not breaking down boxes and such.  Oft times that bothers me, but on this day it proved to be a Godsend.

I grabbed a bag from my car, hopped out, walked around the bin blocking vehicle, hoisted the bag in the air by the handles and holding on tightly, started to shake the contents into the mini roll-off.  Imagine my horror when I saw my bathing suit, flip-flops, towels, and zipper bags full of soap and lotion sail freely into the dumpster.  I was so shocked I couldn't even stop myself until the pool bag was empty.  This might have also be due to age and slowing reflexes, but I am not quite ready to admit that.

I was happy that the dumpster was almost full because it allowed me to quickly regain my composure and recover almost all of the contents of my tote, now resting atop empty cans and beer bottles.  Remember my anxiety about being hyper vigilant and prepared for the coming day?  The night before I had taken two travel sized bottles and replenished them with the expensive shampoo my daughter buys me to help hair regrowth.  This may be another sign of aging, or the negative effects of medication, but again no confessions.  These two little bottles with my handwritten SHAM and COND in black Sharpie were just out of reach.  I had carelessly tossed them in the top of the bag after refilling them, instead of taking the thirty seconds it would have required to unzip a little bag and secure them.  My bad. 

I am resourceful.  And cheap.  I drove back to my place, snugged a step ladder in the back seat of my car, and headed back to the dumpsters.  I opened the ladder, placed it close the to rusty edge of the metal bin, and carefully reached in and successfully retrieved my hair care products.  Voila!  Eureka!  Atta Girl!  I had just proven to myself that I can be stupid and smart within the span of six minutes.

Contents back in place, recyclables properly disposed of, and finally ready to go swim.  Or was I?  Could I put on a bathing suit I knew had just cozied up to cardboard cartons?  Use a towel that had touched discards?  I sat in my car and pondered the possibilities.  I also chuckled that the only diving I would do that day was of the dumpster variety.

In the end, I decided that the five second rule, mostly used for food dropped on the floor, applied here.  That the chlorine of the pool would instantly kill any germs lingering on my suit.  That I could pay attention to the inside folds of my towels and only place those sides against my body.  Everything could get a proper wash when I got home.  I knew that once I hit the water my faux pas would be a just a blip on the radar of my day.

But it didn't stop me from asking the lifeguard "Does this bathing suit make me look trashy?"

o