One of our very best friends whispered in my ear. "I had a Mike moment the other day." And then he went on to describe it. Sweet remembrance. The hub would be pleased. So, in that context, I ran across this little piece he wrote; it made me smile. I hope it serves to do the same for you.
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| (made the hub shiver) |
None of us has the right to claim whatever success,
big or small, we have had in life as being solely of our own making. All of us are the products built in part by
those who have influenced us, usually when we were children, teenagers or young
adults. For many people the prime influence
was a loving parent, a particularly gifted teacher, or a grandparent. I have had the benefit of positive influence
from all of those people, and many more.
But the person who has had the longest, continuous impact on my life,
even to this very minute, was not one of those people. The person most responsible for molding whatever
character I have, apart from my dad, was a coach. His name was Mal Cofield.
I do not remember how it came about, but I ended up
in the YMCA pool one afternoon when I was six years old to try out for the
swimming team. My Dad had been a
swimming instructor in the Navy (as well as a fighter pilot), so I know that he
thought being able to swim well was important.
I suspect that the swimming team idea resulted from the fact that I was
a very skinny red head, completely devoid of any discernible muscle, who had displayed
no notable athletic promise, so the swim team offered an opportunity to toughen
me up, although I am just guessing about that.
The workout
was underway when I hesitantly slipped into the pool. I think that Mal had the team running 20
100’s freestyle. This meant that each
heat of 6 swimmers would do an in the water start, swim 4 lengths of the pool
and recover for the next heat, twenty times.
Since there were heats at both ends of the pool, the heat at the other
end would chase you home on the fourth length.
The faster swimmers, all of them in my case, took great delight in
running over me as I struggled to get to the end of the pool. My heat had
always left by the time I got to the end of the pool, so I was constantly
behind. Within ten minutes I was
utterly exhausted, demoralized about how slow I was, and half-drowned. I
dog-paddled over to the side, coughed up half the pool, and hung on
desperately.
Looking back on this seemingly miniscule event,
which turned out to be monumental in my life, I am sure that Mal did not miss any
of what was going on. Immediately, he
was on his hands and knees beside me.
“Thinking about quitting are you?” he inquired. “Yes,” I gasped. “Your Dad wouldn’t quit, he’s too tough to
quit. Are you as tough as your old
man?” How did he know exactly the right
thing to say to a weak, scared, drowning six-year-old, who he had never met
before? I thought about his question for
a few seconds and then defiantly stated “Yes, I am,” and I
started to swim again. I finished the
workout and came back for more.
Swimming is
not like basketball, baseball, track or tennis, all of which I had tried. Those
sports involve reliance on and
participation with teammates. You can
shout at and encourage them. If the
team wins, there is a cheering crowd, slaps on the back from your teammates and
admiring looks from the spectators.
None of that
is true in swimming. You cannot hear
anyone cheering. You are looking at the
end of the pool coming up, your heart is going 180 beats a minute, at least,
and your entire body is screaming for more oxygen. Your body is so stressed
that the “red mist” clouds your vision.
(If you have not experienced this, you have not maxed yourself
athletically. If you have, you know what
I mean. Welcome to the club.) And when
the race is over, you can barely drag yourself out of the pool. You look over at the coach and he flatly
states your time for the event.
I rarely knew
in what position I finished a race, nor did I care. Mal didn’t care either, because only the time
for the event counted. Had I gone faster
than last time? Sometimes I did,
sometimes I didn’t. Weeks of agony in
practice sometimes translated into a time one-tenth of a second faster than
before. Such is how a swimmer’s progress
is measured. In fractions of a second.
I dreaded Mal’s daily workouts. Most workouts started the same. 20, 20, 20’s.
That meant 20 lengths of kicking, 20 lengths of pull, followed by 20
lengths of freestyle. That is a mile,
just to warm up. Mal had ideas about
making the warm-up as stressful as possible.
Normally, you
used a kickboard to do the kicking. Put an arm along each side of the board,
tuck the back end up under your chain and start kicking. It is a pain, but it is doable. When kicking became easy for most of the
swimmers, he took the kickboards away, so you had to do it on your back with
your arms stretched out in front of you with your fingers interlocked. Try it sometime. It is a good way to take in half the pool up
your nose.
Pulling consisted of putting half of a kickboard
between your knees, so you had to propel yourself only with your stroke. The board was held in place by a band of old
inner tube. Not difficult, particularly if you put the board up close to your
knees, so the main part of your body would float high in the water. When Mal
figured out that trick, we had to put the board down on our ankles, which
served to bend your body like a bow. Try
it sometime.
Finally, there would be 20 lengths of freestyle
swim. As Mal looked at the team doing
the warm up, he could see when the faster swimmers were transitioning to the
swim part. As soon as he saw this, he
would wait until you had about 15 lengths done and start yelling to pick up the
pace as we were loafing. Rarely could
anyone finish the warm up and rest before the serious part of the workout
started.
The serious part of the workout was always run in
heats, with the start of each heat timed to allow almost no rest between heats.
If we were swimming 100’s, which is
four lengths of the pool, you might get 10 seconds rest before doing the next
one. Try 20 100’s. A five or six thousand-yard workout was
routine, although I swam a lot of them that were ten thousand yards, too.
The large
clocks positioned at both ends of the pool mercilessly kept track of your times.
Mal patrolled the perimeter of the pool, yelling out times on each heat, which
was set off by the staccato shriek of his whistle. Every heat was timed by Mal’s omniscient
stopwatch and you never knew when you were being individually timed. As you can figure out, he knew how fast you
could go and knew immediately when you were loafing. The stopwatch would snitch you out. You did
not want to be individually timed. Loafing
would get you a thunderous wallop with a kickboard on the top of the head in
the middle of a turn. Sometimes the
kickboard broke.
There are at least five immutable truths about
swimming. One, the stopwatch never lies.
Two, since the stopwatch never lies, you can’t delude yourself about your
performance. Three, your progress is proportional to the pain endured in
practice. Four, nobody is going to do it
for you. And five, when you win, or your
time is two- tenths of a second quicker, it is only you who gets the credit,
which is as it should be.
Mal had ways of dealing with swimmers who missed a
workout. Bear in mind that we swam 6 days
a week, almost always. If you missed a practice, you had to get on
the high diving board and dive in. All the team would stand on the pool sides
surrounding where you would land. As soon as you hit the water, Mal would blow
his whistle and the entire team would be unleashed on you. There were no rules.
They could hit you, kick you, try to drag you to the bottom, or just try to
keep you under water for as long as possible.
The free-for-all against the malfeasor lasted until Mal blew his
whistle, calling off the dogs, as it were.
It is a miracle no one died. (ed. note: malfeasor: poetic
license)
Did I ever miss a practice? Was I ever late? Yes, unfortunately. I developed a technique to minimize the
damage. I would dive in head first,
allowing me to get to the bottom faster.
On the bottom of the pool was a metal grate over the drain. I could get a grip on the grate with both
hands and curl up in a fetal position, with the biggest breath I could hold
and there I would stay, while my
tormentors would have to expend energy diving down to get at me. I never surfaced from this punishment damage
free, but it was survivable.
At each end of the pool were two buckets. Why?
They were there so you did not have to run to the men’s room to throw
up. Going to the bathroom would allow you to rest. Completely unacceptable in Mal’s world. Throw
up if you must, but keep swimming. Over
the door to the pool was a sign which read
Hurt,
pain, agony. Which have you achieved
today? Need
I say more?
Mal was not without a sense of humor. At a dual meet
in high school, John Trent was scheduled to swim the 100 yard freestyle event. Unfortunately,
John forgot his team swim suit. Furious, Mal detailed a swimmer to go to the locker
room and get John a suit. The only suit
found was about 8 inches too big. When John got up on the starting block, he
had to hold the suit up and told Mal it was going to come off when he dove in. Mal said he didn’t care and to swim the
event. The gun went off and John dove
in, immediately losing the suit. When it
came time to flip the first of three turns, there was a gasp from the crowd,
followed by much hilarity, anticipating the remaining two turns. John finished the race in his birthday suit
and was handed a towel when he climbed out of the pool. Thank goodness he wasn’t scheduled for the
backstroke events.
I could go on about how radical a coach Mal was, but
I won’t. We won the state championship. To Mal’s credit, I will tell you that nearly
all my swimming buddies were state champions. Most of them got full rides to
swim in college. Even I got paid to swim
at Wheaton College. (Lest you think I
was good, I wasn’t. I was just better
than what they had.) Most all of us were
honor students and I do not know of anyone getting into trouble in school. We were all too tired to do that. I do not
know of anyone who did not graduate from college. Almost everyone obtained an
advanced or professional degree. I think this is remarkable. In my view, most
of the credit should go to Mal.
Mal taught us be ruthlessly honest with
ourselves. If you were loafing the
practice, you knew it. Your times were
hard reality. Either they were dropping,
or they weren’t. If they weren’t, there
was no one to blame but yourself. You could not blame the failure --- and that
is exactly what it was --- a personal failure, on a teammate who dropped the
ball or bungled a play. Nobody was in that pool but you. You were responsible,
no one else. What an incredibly important life lesson to learn so young.
I cannot overemphasize how difficult the daily
practices were for me. To merely say
they were hard does not do it justice. I threw up often. Routinely, I could
hardly get out of the pool without resting at the end of the workout. But I wouldn’t
quit. Quitting would have been dishonorable.
Quitting would be admitting defeat. I knew I couldn’t live with being thought of
as a quitter. Another important life
lesson learned young, before things started to count when you were an adult.
So, what’s the point of all this? It is simple. In
addition to learning personal responsibility and to never quit, I learned that
almost nothing in life is as bad as swim practice. I remember lying in a hospital bed for twelve
days with 80 stitches running from my breastbone down to where you cannot cut
anymore. My colon and rectum had been surgically removed as a result of years
of unaddressed colitis. When your rectum is removed, you are left with a gaping
hole which must be left open to heal from the inside out. For two days after the operation I was not
able to have any pain medication. I was
in agony, but I told my wife, who held my hand all night, “It is not as bad as
swim practice.” And, it was true.
When I broke my neck being careless on my mountain
bike and paralyzed my left arm, I told the nurse that as bad as it was, “Swim
practice was worse.” Again, true. Ditto
for when I took out four ribs and my left lung in a motorcycle misadventure.
When I had to deal with difficult legal problems,
for clients and myself, I told my wife “As bad as it is, it isn’t as bad as
swim practice.” Absolutely.
You may think I am overstating my case. I am not. I am not putting you on, either. I
just haven’t run into much that is as bad as those practices. It is still true to this very day. You might
think that being terminally ill with gallbladder cancer would be worse. I don’t think so. Different, maybe, but not
worse.
I am in pain. Most all of the day and night. This is
because I refuse to take morphine during the day. I will take it at night in
the forlorn hope that I might get a few hours of sleep. When the pain is really
bad during the day, I just say to myself, “Well, it is not as bad as swim
practice” and go on with whatever I am doing.
It seems to work.
I know that at
a divinely appointed time in the near future I will die. My beloved physician, Dr. Annette Moore,
tells me she will make a house call and that I will not be in any pain. I worry about that. I plan on dying in my bedroom with my Lynne
beside me. My dog, the Iverson, will
likely be on the bed beside me. I
suspect that there will be many family members present for my final send off. Knowing them, they will probably stand around
looking bored and impatiently tell me to “get on with it,” because they have a
lunch or dinner appointment scheduled.
Maybe I will have some last words to say.
So, after I am gone, you might hear someone say “I heard
his last words were something about swim practice. What is that all
about?” Now you will be able to say
that you know exactly what I said and that my last words were “Well, it is not
as bad as swim practice.” Maybe it will
be true. And then you should smile and
laugh.
Mike out.
