It’s 7 PM on a Thursday night and I’m on a Zoom call, which is exactly where I do not want to be. But it’s time to recertify as a swimming official, and even officials’ training is on Zoom now.
This is my last referee / starter training clinic. I’ve been doing this since 2010 and have the training practically memorized now, but you have to recertify every two years and you can’t recertify without sitting through the training so here I am.
The person who usually does this training is a lovely person, an older man who has been a swim official at every level up to national championships for many years. He’s not the trainer tonight, though. I hope he’s OK. I can hear his voice in my head as I look at the PowerPoint slides, the same ones that have accompanied this training for at least the last 13 years and probably longer. Many bullet points with many numbered and lettered sub-bullets. Each slide has at least four levels of bullets.
A new development: Starters now say “Take your marks,” rather than “Take your mark.” This is because USA Swimming has adopted the practice of World Aquatics (formerly known as FINA) and the Prince-Mont Swim League follows USA Swimming’s lead. Now you know.
*****
Every third word in this slide deck is enclosed in quotation marks. Quotation marks for emphasis are among my least favorite things.
*****
My camera is on because they’re making us keep our cameras on. We also have to respond to poll questions that will appear at intervals throughout the training, just to keep us honest. It’s insulting, really. You’d think that they’d trust us to pay attention and not to sit here and write blog posts and text our friends who are also in the class and who are texting back. Insulting.
*****
We’re running 23 minutes late at the halfway mark.
*****
The thing is that you have so many other straight up legitimate typographic options for emphasizing text - italics, bold, underlining, even color - so why resort to the absolutely wrong and illegitimate use of punctuation for emphasis?
*****
I’m not the only one whose attention is wandering. One attendee is cleaning her kitchen. Several others are typing away and I will assume that they, like me, are not taking notes on the class material. Meanwhile, it is 9:08 PM. The call was supposed to end at 9. When you send a meeting invite for 7-9, you are absolutely obligated to end the meeting at 9. Maybe 9:05.
*****
The whole point of this thing, after all, is to teach people to enforce the basic rules of human decency and civilization. You enter the pool feet first during warmups. You touch the wall with two hands, simultaneously, at the turn and finish in butterfly and breaststroke. You don't misuse quotation marks. And you don't keep people on a Godforsaken Zoom call for more than five minutes past the appointed time. My God.
*****
At least two of the more than 40 people on this call are actually lying down. Still on camera, pillows propped behind their heads - they are done and they don't care who knows it. Respect.
*****
The class finally ended at 9 gosh darn 45 PM and not one second too soon. Let's just say that I was less than engaged at that point. I was texting with a friend who was threatening to drop some inappropriate comments into the chat just to shake things up and I offered her cold hard cash money to do it. She could have made bank, I tell you what. We're talking about one percent money.
It's Friday now and I'm at a swim meet doing absolutely nothing official. I'm going to watch swimming and then I'm going to go home. Somebody else is going to have to wield the clipboard tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment