Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Found Words

I love to swim. It's kind of solitary but not really. I mean, I swim along and the water blocks out conversation and, usually, people don't try to have conversations with me while I'm swimming.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about swimming in a pool.

So I'm swimming solo although I might not be the only person in the pool. And I don't mind that; it doesn't bother me at all. Unless it's too crowded. But as I'm swimming more I'm finding the times when it seems to be more crowded and try to not go. The pool at my gym isn't that big so there's not a lot of space for hordes of others. If there are a few walkers and water exercise people in the walking lane, that leaves three lanes to swim in. And if there are more than two people in a lane - well, I can't imagine that. Really. Two gets a little tricky depending on skill level and preference. For example, the "circle swim" doesn't work in my opinion, unless we're doing exactly the same thing. Which leaves splitting the lane and then, we better both be doing the crawl, back stroke, and kick boards; no butterflies or breast stroke or someone will get whacked.

And what does that have to do with found words? Not much.

Except I'm talking about the swimming pool as a source for catching snippets of conversations. Generally out of context and the punch line may be missing or you get only the punch line. And I've noticed that there are some people who tend to be posers in the pool.

I'm not talking about the hip young "meat market" type of people in swim trunks flexing their muscles. For the most part, that is not what my gym is made up of, which is why I joined it a number of years ago.

But there seem to be some people who like to sit in the jacuzzi or stand in small groups in the walk lane and "hold court," so to speak. They have opinions to share and sermons to make. I don't mind. It makes for some interesting character sketches or writing prompts or ideas for stories to discover between my laps.

Where do you pick up some lines for your writing?


The pool gem so far this week is as follows:

"Yah, like that. Insurance companies. I tell ya, it's in their best interest to keep us sick."
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