Welcome to the working week

It's Saturday and today is a test of my determination to write every day, a test that I am passing right now, as I sit on a bench at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center. I'm a stroke and turn judge for my younger son's first high school swim meet, and I have 15 minutes or so while the dive meet wraps up and the swimmers warm up.

Last year, I had to referee all of the high school meets because the person who would have had that job, and who really likes that job, was recovering from knee surgery. I'm a competent referee but I don't like doing it. It's too center-of-attention. It's a lot of pressure. Plus, if I was the referee now, I'd be bossing the coaches and officials, monitoring the time, and generally running the show, rather than sitting and writing. I won't pretend that it's not fun to blow the whistle and bark orders, but I'm much better suited to the support role.

*****
Diving is fun to watch, but other than the really outstanding dives and the obviously egregiously bad ones, I can't tell one from another. In about a second, the judges have to decide if the dive was executed correctly, with the correct number of turns or rotations or whatever for the particular dive, and then score it for quality. Again, it's a lot of pressure. Better them than me.

Diving just concluded and warm-ups are about to begin. I'm going to try to get a picture of my son before the meet begins. Once the whistle blows, I'm on duty. I take my responsibilities seriously. Even my relatively subordinate role is an important one. I don’t have time to play.

*****
It’s Sunday now, Sunday of a very busy Thanksgiving weekend. I love Thanksgiving weekend and I’m sad that it’s almost over, but it’s only 12:30 and I still have a nice afternoon of walking (if it stops raining), movie-watching, reading, and soup-making to look forward to.

The swim meet went well. I had only one call, for a bad backstroke turn. I won’t burden you with the technical details; just know that there’s a right way and a lot of wrong ways to execute a backstroke turn, and this swimmer found several of the wrong ways during his three turns. He’ll learn. I’m not sure what might have happened in the other judges’ zones. That’s the referee’s problem. That’s above my pay grade. I never did get a picture of my son, but he has 8 more meets, so I’ll try again next week.

It’s dark and gray and cold and rainy now. The walking might have to wait for another day. I might have to proceed directly to reading and movie-watching and soup-making. There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. It’s been a lovely weekend, and I don’t even mind going back to work. It doesn't thrill me but it won't kill me. I don’t have to work standing up, and my shoes stay dry, and I even get paid. It's all good.