Will to win

"Two weeks without you and I still haven't gotten over you yet."

It's 8:15 AM on Saturday and although the pool is still and quiet in the early cool gray morning, the music selection is pretty fire. Both teams are finished warming up, both teams are finished with their pre-meet cheers, and the 15-18 boys and girls are gathered at the start, waiting for the medley relays to start. And here we go. 

*****

It's not over yet. We're now in the break between the individual events and the freestyle relays. Our boys medley relay team, consisting of my son and three of his friends, cruised to an easy win in Event 1. In the individual events, our two teams have traded the lead all morning. No idea what the score is now. Anything could happen. It all comes down to the freestyle relays. 

*****

One thing that I've learned in 16 years as a swim parent is that the race isn't always to the swiftest. In a contest with equally matched competitors, and even in some contests that aren't so equally matched, the final result often comes down to who wants it more. 

That's what I thought about as I circled the Trader Joe's parking lot, looking for a parking spot to replace the one that I had just lost to a bird. 

Let's be clear: this was a big bird, a fat and glossy black crow. He wasn't as big as my RAV4, but he was big for a parking lot bird. And he was determined to stay big. He was clutching the remains of a 7-11 hot dog in his beak (I know that it was a 7-11 hot dog because the hot dog was still in its cardboard sleeve, which made the situation even funnier), and he seemed ready to fight all comers who might have designs on that hot dog. A bird doesn’t attain and maintain such impressive size and girth, he seemed to say, without defending its food with some vigor. 

But again, he’s a bird, not a damn mountain lion; and so I expected, when I began to slowly inch my way into the parking space, that he’d recognize the great disparity between the size of my car and the size of his rotund but still birdlike body, and the inevitable result should the two objects collide. “Move, bird,” I said, moving slowly, by millimeters, into the spot. 

The bird, holding the hot dog firmly in his beak, refused to budge. “Fuck off, lady,” he said. “I will die for this hot dog.” 

I was nonplussed, and not just because the Trader Joe’s parking lot is apparently home to a talking bird with a bit of a sailor mouth. “Come on,” I said. “I admire your tenacity but you can’t pull this off. You vs. this car? This car wins every time. You know it and I know it, so move it. Shift your tail feathers,” I said, barely but still moving. I tooted the horn a bit, just for emphasis. 

The bird stood his ground. “Go ahead,” he said. “You can drive right over me and then scrape me out of your tire treads, and what’s left might not be pretty or even recognizable, but I promise you that this hot dog will still be intact, and still held in the kung fu grip of my cold, dead beak.” 

What else could I do? I backed out of the space, and started looking for another one. 

“Wow,” said my 17-year-old son. “You just lost a parking space battle to a bird.” 

“What can I tell you?” I said. “The bird wanted that little plot of land more than I did. Respect.”

*****

We were almost tied after the last individual events, leaving three freestyle relays that would decide the meet outcome. When the relays finally started, the cheering was absolutely deafening. Both teams cheered, of course, but our kids screamed and jumped up and down with an intensity that gave their relay-swimming friends an almost-physical boost that propelled them through the races just a tiny bit faster. Two of our three freestyle relays took first place, giving our team the very narrow 7-point edge that won the meet. And now you know what a hotdog-clutching parking lot bird has in common with a summer swim team.  In the heat of battle, it all came down to who wanted it more. Respect.