Swimming Like a Fish Out Of Water

6-26-16 Sunday 

      I went to the Country Side swimming pool in the Tai-ping section of Taichung this Sunday morning, but I didn’t go swimming. A foreigner, or anyone who has lived in a developed nation, must remember to ride with the tide in Taiwan; there is nothing that can be changed here because there happens to be a “better way”; most people here, as elsewhere, don’t pay attention to “better ways.” They are used to the current habit, be it good or bad. In Taiwan, many habits are bad if you value efficiency and respect. I couldn’t go swimming because the pool staff and clients displayed neither.

      The pool opens at 7 am on weekend mornings so I knew I was already in hot water when I left the condo on my bike at 9 am. I was ready to take my chances after the fifteen minute ride. The parking lot was full; about a dozen cars and scooters. Still, there was a space enough to park a bicycle near the stairs to the entrance. While chaining the bike, an old habit that I picked up from New York City where any bicycle not chained down (and even some that are) will not be there when the owner returns to ride it away, I overheard a cleaning woman mumbling to herself about a car parked against her maintenance room door. I asked if it was okay for me to park the bike where I was and she said no problem, so I went up the stairs to check in at the counter, and get my locker key.

A young man stood alone behind the counter. It was par for the course in Taiwan that someone after me ignored me and went ahead to be served. I gave the clerk my ID card when he was ready. He asked me for ten dollars, the equivalent of thirty-one cents. I asked, in Mandarin, what it was for, and he said to get a locker key. When I told him I had a pre-paid locker for a year he looked incredulously at me and asked for ten dollars again. On my ID card, there is no mention of my being a pre-paid yearly member or that my membership includes a private large locker. Despite explaining to him why I didn’t need to pay for a locker key on a one-time basis, we were both stuck in the mud; though cheap enough, it was a matter of principle to me. I don’t know what territorial pissing he was doing in the pool house. Perhaps my wife, a native who speaks Mandarin fluently, could talk with this part-timer who was obviously wet behind the ears, so I called her. He didn’t know that he was swimming in dangerous waters.

After getting through to my wife on my cell phone, I waited while the lone shark devoured other’s payments and raised his head above water to see me. I handed him the phone, slippery with sweat, and held it to his ear. How did he know, my wife later said he asked, if I really had a pre-paid membership? He thought I was lying? Why would I lie? She told him I had a pre-paid locker but he wanted to see the receipt; I only had the ID card. With squawking middle-aged ladies talking nearby, and youngsters gleefully playing with the tubes as their parents tried to get through, it was becoming a nightmare, not a wet dream. The purser, or “pusser” according to Wikipedia, was being a real pussy, and tried to find evidence of my membership in an on-board computer; his lifeboat, so to speak. But he was treading water and sinking fast. The sharks were circling, so he threw me a lifesaver, handing me a random key to my treasure chest of goggles, earplugs, skull cap, towel and swimming trunks. Ahoy, mate; it was the wrong locker number key.

I told him “Number 26, please,” so he took it back and asked for my ID in exchange. He went to put my ID in the #26 slot but found someone else’s ID there. No matter; he put mine in front of it and handed me the key. Mayday! I called back my wife to let her know there was the possibility that he had given me the key to someone else’s private locker and to hold the line until I checked. Sure enough, the key on an elastic string, looking nothing like the one I used previously, didn’t fit.

Before I left the locker area, the gangway before the steps down to the pool, I noticed that at least there were still two swimming lanes that weren’t occupied. I went through the male latrine and shower areas back out to the front desk to exchange keys. As my wife had thought, there were two #26 lockers on board, a smaller locker and Davy’s own. Without an apology or smile, he exchanged keys. Finally, I was seeing daylight over the stormy seas.

Going through the procedure to prepare myself for the morning swim, I went through steps one through ten. There were ten lanes. When I cleaned my feet wet in the little puddle at the stairs’ bottom, I knew to walk, not run to a lane to begin my ten laps. Alas, by the time I had adjusted my goggles and plugged in my earplugs, all the lanes were occupied with swimmers, some swimming, and some leaning against the pool wall. I went and sat on a bench to wait for an open lane. A heavy young man came by, tested the water with a fat toe, and waited too. I saw my chance: lane one was emptying out of two of three young ladies who had been bobbing up and down. I was on my final approach with the ladder in sight when I noticed the dingy boy going overboard into the coveted lane. I could have argued with him; I could have screamed, but I chose not to. The winds were not blowing in the right direction for me this morning and I decided it was better to just be a landlubber and ride the bike on the next wave home.

I said nothing to the rude young clerk who had unbeknownst ruined my morning chances of a swim, and heard no apology from him or questioning why I had finished swimming and was leaving already. I texted my wife saying I was leaving before I hurt someone and to tell her not to call me Ishmael from the widow’s watch when she sees my ship coming in. She said she is going to call tomorrow to complain but I would just as well not turn this sun shower into a typhoon. If I want to merrily row my boat down the Taiwan stream, I must remember that life here is not always a dream, on the weekend.